Voting in America

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:57:15 GMT

Recieved via email. Some of these "facts" are more like opinions, others I would contend are fairly distressing:

20 Amazing Facts

Did you know....
1.. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two
companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2.. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or
oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3.. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S
are brothers.

4.. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign
organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5.. 35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel,
who became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6.. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-time friend of
the Bush family, was caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7.. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W.
Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

8.. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the
U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9.. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper
trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine
is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10.. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket
machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11.. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12.. Global Elections Management Systems (GEMS), a wholly owned Diebold subsidiary, makes the
code
for the central tabulator system that counted approximately 50 percent of the votes in the (Bush-
Kerry) election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.

13.. GEMS employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers--the people who write
the voting machine computer code.

14 GEMS former Senior Vice-President, Jeff Dean was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the
first degree. This was accomplished by planting back doors in his client's accounting software and
using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years. He served jail
time but has not paid $500,000 restitution.

According to the findings of fact in case no. 89-1-04034-1 (Washington State):
"...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."

15.. None of the international election observers were
allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16.. California banned the use of Diebold machines because
the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs
could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

17.. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable
touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

18.. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors
detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican
candidates.

19.. Florida's governor, Jeb is Bush's brother.

20.. Major voting anomalies in Florida -- again always
favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and questioned by
experts.

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 04:12:03 GMT

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Voting in America