It seems that, almost without exception, the voting machine business is operated by companies with strong ties to the republican party, military contractors, hard right wingers, and fundamentalists.
Lynn Landes' web site has an excellent overview of voting machine companies, and I'll add a few bits of information to hers.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm#OtherThe largest company, ES&S, was known as American Information Systems (AIS) before 1999. It was founded in 1980 by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. AIS was largely funded with money from the very wealthy Ahmanson family of California, who also have helped finance The Chalcedon Institute, a dominionist organization that wants to see a return to Biblical Law. Todd Urosevich is still with ES&S, while Bob is currently the President of Diebold. Here's a previous post I made about ES&S with some further info:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x38210Many people know about Diebold and ES&S, yet even less prominent companies have these same kinds of connections to the right wing. For instance, Danaher Guardian is run by Steven and Mitchell Rales, who each are worth more than a billion dollars. It was a Danaher Guardian machine that "mistakenly" gave george bush a few thousand extra votes in Franklin County, Ohio (why do these computer glitches always bear right?).
A newsmeat.com search of campaign contributions finds that the Rales have given generously to republican politicians.
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=DC&last=RalesThey also have given very generously to an organization called Ameripac. When we visit Ameripac's web site, we are greeted with the smiling faces of tom delay, george w. bush, and bill frist. Also on the front page is a bizarre (and obviously old) headline: "Kerry, The Communist Party's choice, must repudiate endorsement, says AMERIPAC." The press release concludes, “We call on John Kerry to repudiate the Communist Party USA, and walk away from its endorsement,” Gottlieb concluded. “Otherwise, Americans will know that John Kerry’s vision of America has a hammer and sickle waving somewhere over the landscape.”
Also on this sparse web site is a link to "Past Efforts." You would expect to find out about Ameripac's past support for republican politicians. But instead, we're greeted by three photos: Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Daschle.
Well, what a fine organization the Rales brothers have helped fund--it's a rightwing smear machine! (Thankfully, the commie John Kerry was defeated--or at least that's what the voting machines told us.)
http://www.ameripac.org/Another company, Triad GSI of Xenia, Ohio, run by the Rapp family, counts many of the votes in Ohio, including Warren County, which was mysteriously placed under lockdown while the vote counting was done. The father, Tod Rapp, originally wrote the program that counts the votes. He also was a financial supporter of the bush campaign.
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?city=Xenia&st=OH&last=rappThere is certainly nothing wrong with donating to political campaigns, even those of republicans, but why do all vote-counting companies seem to be tied to the republican party? And as shown on Lynn Landes' site, many have strong ties to military contractors. Why are military contractors so interested in getting into the vote-counting business? Why not try some other line of business, like manufacturing espresso makers?
In 1988, Ronnie Dugger wrote a landmark article about electronic voting for The New Yorker.
http://www.govsux.com/annals_of_democracy.htmIn the article, he said this about fixing elections:
But who on Earth would do such a thing? In Chicago in 1982, 58 Democratic party bosses were convicted of fraud after they were caught stuffing not the ballot box, but the computer. They had punched out fraudulent cards for falsely registered and nonexistent voters, then run them through the card-reader.
There have been numerous other ambiguous cases. Many of them have involved Berkeley's Computer Election Service (CES)-which recently changed its name to Business Records Corporation Election Service. The company is the dominant force In the American election industry; an estimated 33 to 40 percent of all American votes are cast on and counted by CES systems. CES uses aversion of the punch-card voting system prevalent in California.
In 1985, the National Security Agency (NSA)-the government's most expansive and most secretive intelligence service-took an interest in CES. According to the New York Times, NSA was following a directive from then-President Reagan to improve the security of major non-military computer systems.
Government officials were queasy at the prospect of a top-secret military spy agency-particularly NSA, whose domain is high-tech intelligence gathering-delving into the nation's electoral process. According to the Times, an official of the government's General Accounting Office told a Senate committee that NSA's involvement with CES "raises basic questions concerning the extent to which the defense establishment should be involved in policy formulation within the government's civilian agencies."Geez, that's enough to make your hair stand on end!
BTW, the company mentioned in the Dugger article, CES, was founded in 1984 by Jack Gerbel. CES went on to have several run-ins with the law. Jack Gerbel is now president of Unilect Corporation, whose machines are used in Carteret County, North Carolina, where 4,500 votes were permanently lost.
http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=27168&Section=NewsIsn't it wonderful we live in a democracy?
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