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Voting Machine Irregularities

Tricky

Briefly immortal
Tricky
Joined
Nov 24, 2001
Messages
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I just got this very partisan piece of e-mail that makes some serious points. Partisan or not, does it have merit?
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

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."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of 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.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

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! (See the movie here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/
Click to expand...
 
Whenever I bring up this subject . . .

. . . I'm told, "Get over it! Bush won!"


What are we anyway, a Banana Republic? Oh no, they obtain votes through violence and coersion, they're not high-tech like we are.
 
The sad thing is, the kooks at black box voting are getting legitimized by bottom-tier media sources (like Slashdot/OSDN). I'll never forget how BBV reported Bush stole Ohio but the media had a government induced lockdown on reporting it.

So the Diebold conspiracy theories are gaining more and more steam with the help of useful idiots like Slashdot/OSDN and Democratic Underground.
 
Mephisto said:
. . . I'm told, "Get over it! Bush won!"


What are we anyway, a Banana Republic? Oh no, they obtain votes through violence and coersion, they're not high-tech like we are.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I get that too, but I'm not so much concerned about the past as the future. It looks as if we are going more towards cheating, not less.
 
corplinx said:
The sad thing is, the kooks at black box voting are getting legitimized by bottom-tier media sources (like Slashdot/OSDN). I'll never forget how BBV reported Bush stole Ohio but the media had a government induced lockdown on reporting it.

So the Diebold conspiracy theories are gaining more and more steam with the help of useful idiots like Slashdot/OSDN and Democratic Underground.
Click to expand...
Well, as I pointed out, the sources are very partisan. But the main question is not "who says so?" but "is it true?"
 
Tricky said:
Yeah, I get that too, but I'm not so much concerned about the past as the future. It looks as if we are going more towards cheating, not less.
Click to expand...

Oh, and what makes you think that a certain political party in the U.S. might be shady enough to cheat in future elections?

A. WMD
B. Valerie Plame
C. You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie?
D. "I feel the insurgency is in its last throes."
E. or any number of other "mistruth's?

The worst thing about this whole affair is that these past two elections have only been "test runs." They're undoubtedly going to be much better at covering their tracks in future elections.

Hey, GET OVER IT! Just because they cheated once to win an election doesn't mean they'll continue, yeah right!
 
Tricky said:
Well, as I pointed out, the sources are very partisan. But the main question is not "who says so?" but "is it true?"
Click to expand...

Not at all. The question is, "is the tapestry being painted a reflection of reality?". Typical Kennedy kooks do this sort of tapestry painting. They present lists of data (truthful, half-truthful, truthful but twisted, and sometimes downright untrue) that if you look at the entire list you are inevitably drawn to an epiphany along the lines of "if only half of this is true..... mein gott!". Its a great technique since it tries to quagmire skeptics into argueing the plethora of points. Any "true" points are then evidence of the accuracy of the tapestry being painted.

Down let yourself be overwhelmed by a shotgun technique is my best advice. Whip out your anti-kook judo.
 
Tricky said:
Well, as I pointed out, the sources are very partisan. But the main question is not "who says so?" but "is it true?"
Click to expand...

One of the 3-4 previous threads on this subject has a cite to the Democratic Party's investigation on Ohio (cited by me in the thread, but I don't have the oomph to go looking at the moment). Their conclusion appears to be that some things happened, some things may have happened, some things didn't happen, and there is no real evidence of widespread fraud, as alleged.

That was my reading of it (and based only on my memory, which is being attacked by a severe cold at the moment); YMMV.
 
All links pointing to blackboxvoting.org are immediately suspect, since that site is run by well known loon and proven liar Bev Harris.

Just keep in mind - the stealing of a US election would be the story of the century. Any reporter who broke the story would have Pulitzer Prizes stacked to the ceiling. And yet, CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, LA Times, etc., none of them are even pursuing this story. Why? Well, keep in mind that they also don't seriously pursue the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and 9/11 conspiracies.

I know it sounds flippant, but "Bush won in 2000. Bush won in 2004. Get over it."
 
From the snopes site.

Originally posted by Malruhn:
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."

[FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif]This is true; however, Warren O'Dell (the Diebold exec) claims he did not understand the implications of what he said. Here is an article from Diebold's web site: [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif]quote:[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif]In an invitation to a Republican fund-raiser at his suburban Columbus mansion, O'Dell said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year."

The letter closely followed a visit by O'Dell to a fund-raising powwow at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch for six-figure fund-raisers known as "Pioneers and Rangers."

He said he regrets the wording in the letter.

"I'm a pretty experienced business leader, but a real novice on the political side of this. This blind-sided me," O'Dell said. "I don't have a political adviser or a screener or a letter reviewer or any of that stuff."[/FONT]


​
Click to expand...


By any stretch of the imagination, that is a pure and simple conflict of interest. Even if there is no fraud, the appearance is enough to cause concern. There should be no possibility of business interests having a possible say in the outcome of an election.

That is not saying there was fraud or not, but the basic principle of there being no apperance of partisan advantage at all.

​
I also not the Snopes link was not to a Snopes debunking, but just another thread like this one.
 
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Tricky said:
I just got this very partisan piece of e-mail that makes some serious points. Partisan or not, does it have merit?
Click to expand...

All your vote are belong to us!
You have no chance for winning election, make your time.
For great justice...

:D
 
a_unique_person said:
The main point, though, is the appearance of justice and legitimacy. Either way, these are seriously compromised.
Click to expand...

How so?

If a different company were to make the machines, that company would be owned by someone. That owner has a political opinion of his own. Chances are, he has some money and is able to donate to his candidate on a level that would draw some personal attention.

So what?
 
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