Why do republican companies count nearly all our votes?
This is the first I've read about this fact, and it's entirely unacceptable, particularly when you look at some of the results that defied polling predictions by swings of up to 16%.
Those of us old enough to remember more than two or three elections know that exit polls are extremely accurate. Networks used to be able to accurately call before the polls even closed. Now both exit polls, major pollsters like Zogby and Harris are wildly off the mark. I read Zogby the day before the election, and he predicted a Kerry win of 311 electoral votes, and the exit polls were on track with that until 1:36 am, probably a good 5-6 hours after their final results are known, and well after they had a large enough sample to determine the outcome.
This is an irritating, math intensive issue, but it has a profound effect on the quality of our life, the kind of schools we have, whether we are a largely middle class society or more of us slip further and further away from financial stability, whether our soldiers go to other countries to kill and die, and whether we get to choose our own leaders.
After you read this, take a minute to contact our secretary of state and tell him this is beyond unacceptable.
Elections@ss.ca.gov
KEY EXCERPTS:
GOP counts nearly all votesHere’s a shocking fact. The reason it was so easy to steal this election is that, unlike the situation in Europe, where citizens count the ballots, employees of a highly secretive Republican-leaning company, ES&S, totally managed every aspect of the 2004 U.S. election. That included everything from voter registration, printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, tabulation of votes (often with armed guards keeping the media and members of the public who wished to witness the count at bay) and the first reporting of the results—for 60 million voters in 47 states—according to Christopher Bollyn, writing in American Free Press. Most other votes were counted by three other firms that are snugly in bed with the GOP.
“Any actual counting of votes by citizens is very rare in the U.S., except for a few counties in Montana and other states, where paper ballots are still hand-counted,” Bollyn explains.
Four major companies control the U.S. vote count: Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and SAIC. All of them are hard-wired into the Bush campaign and power structure. The Bush government gave them millions to roll out computerized voting machines. Diebold chief O’Dell is a top Bush fundraiser.
Diebold’s Election division is headed by Bob Urosevich, whose brother Todd is a top exec at “rival” ESS. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, bagman for the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover of American government. Sequoia is owned by a partner member of the Carlyle Group, which has dictated foreign policy in both Bush administrations and which had employed former President Bush for quite a while. The State of California recently received a settlement of $2.6 million in its lawsuit against Diebold for lying about the security of its voting machines in Alameda County.
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Then, in 2003, what’s known as “black box voting” helped Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had deeply offended female, Latino and Jewish voters, defeat a popular Latino Democrat who substantially led in polls a week before the election—in strongly Democratic California.
See the rest of this article at the link below.
Electronic Voting
How the Grinch stole the White House . . . again
By Alan Waldman
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://onlinejournal.com/evoting/112004Waldman/112004waldman.html
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