Did You Know ES&S And Diebold , And 2 Brothers Counted 80%

[babsbunny]

of our votes? This article is from April 28th, 2004. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

[Stevepol]

1. Thanks for re-posting this. Since we're the only media we have to do that.

I think Lynn Landes is a long-time voting rights activist interested in the problem of electronic voting. She's been in it maybe longer than anybody, has testified in numerous hearings, written books, etc.

Glad you posted this Babsbunny. People just coming in to DU need to be made aware of it and others reminded since the MSM won't touch it especially if it's coupled with the exit poll / election results discrepancy and so on.

[foo_bar]

2. Lynn Landes on exit polls

Exit polls are completely non-transparent and unverifiable. They're as bad as voting by machine, absentee, or early. There's no meaningful oversight to either enterprise. Worse yet, a belief in exit polls is a trap that's had tragic consequences for elections around the world.
...
Freeman gives his readers a set of false choices: either believe the polls or believe the election results. He doesn't offer the third alternative--don't believe either. Sure, I think that Bush lost the election. But, I'm not going to be intellectually dishonest in order to prove it. I'm not going to give total credibility to exit poll data from the networks' completely non-transparent National Election Pool and then turn around and give no credibility to election results from our equally non-transparent election system. Both should be treated with equal scrutiny, if not complete contempt.
...
One thing is certain, if these so-called analysts think they can protect our right to vote through the use of unverifiable exit polls, they're delusional. Even if they get a third party to conduct a more transparent exit poll than what Mitofsky conducts (which even I've thought about), it still cannot take the place of free and fair elections.

http://www.counterpunch.org/landes03032005.html

[mom cat]

3. And that they are both staunch Repukes!

[nicknameless]

4. This isn't new, but it's a good read:

http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevoteFAQ.htm

Why do I call Diebold partisan and unethical, you ask? How's this:

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." - Walden O'Dell, Diebold's CEO in a fundraising letter to Republicans, Fall 2003. O'Dell and other Diebold Senior Executives are Republican "Pioneers", which is the designation you get when you raise over $100,000. Brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich co-founded ES&S, another voting machine company, before Bob became President of Diebold Election Systems. His brother Todd is a Vice President of ES&S, the #2 vote machine maker, and is also a "Pioneer". According to campaign finance records at OpenSecrets.org, of the over $240,000 given by Diebold’s directors and chief officers to political campaigns since 1998, all has gone to Republican candidates or party funds. Is that partisan enough for you? Well, what about calling them unethical?

Check this out - No less than 5 people (Cooper, Lee, Graye, Elder, and Dean - http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf ) involved with the management and development of Diebold's systems are convicted felons, including Senior Vice President Jeff Dean, and topping the list are his twenty-three counts of felony Theft in the First Degree. According to the findings of fact in case no. 89-1-04034-1 (Washington State, King County District Court):

“Defendant’s thefts occurred over a 2 1/2 year period of time, there were multiple incidents, more than the standard range can account for, the actual monetary loss was substantially greater than typical for the offense, the crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized accounting system that defendant maintained for the victim, and the defendant used his position of trust and fiduciary responsibility as a computer systems and accounting consultant for the victim to facilitate the commission of the offenses."

To sum up, he was convicted of 23 felony counts of theft from by - get this - planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection. The reason for the embezzlement? He needed the money because "he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died." A little more:

BlackBoxVoting.org's associate director Andy Stephenson ( ) obtained the court records of Jeffrey Dean which noted that the King County, Washington prosecutor was after him for over $500,000 in restitution.

"So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer of the (Diebold) GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the (Bush-Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen," said Stephenson.

In addition, Dean told prosecutors (whose offices were on the ninth floor of the King County courthouse) that he was unemployed, when in fact he was working for Diebold who afforded him with 24-hour access to Diebold's King County, Washington GEMS central tabulator, according to Stephenson. (Dean worked on the GEMS tabulator on the fifth floor of the same King County courthouse!) http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

Do you trust computer systems designed by this man? Is trust important in electronic voting systems?

So here we are - Means, Motive, Opportunity - the whole package. And since the systems are so poorly designed, no audit trail to show any wrongdoing. Add some cries of "conspiracy theories" and "sore losers", and you've got yourself a mandate. Four more years, indeed. Surprise, surprise.