Who owns the voting machines? - Printable Version +- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora) +-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Political, Governmental, and Economic Systems and Strategies (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-33.html) +--- Thread: Who owns the voting machines? (/thread-9921.html) |
Who owns the voting machines? - Magda Hassan - 21-10-2012 Didn't some one say it's not who they vote for but who counts the votes that really matters? Quote:Oct. 18, 2012 If the Romney's can't win legally, they'll take over Ohio's electronic voting machines through investments, a direct conflict of interest in a contentious state in this election. Who owns the voting machines? - Lauren Johnson - 21-10-2012 I consider one of the dogs that did not bark on this issue was the lack of Democratic opposition to the voting machine scandal. Opposition did not exist from the top Democratic leadership. The second non-barking dog was Sen. Kerry not contesting the 2004 election despite serious voting irregularities in one county in Ohio -- a swing county. Kerry 'graciously' accepted defeat without a word of protest. The dog that was going to bark was Mike Connell, the Republican operative who set up the intermediate server system. I did bark once as his plane was going to splatter on the ground just before he was to testify as to his role: "Fuck." The Democratic leadership had been told, IMO, to keep their yappers shut. Who owns the voting machines? - Charlie Prima - 21-10-2012 - edited - Who owns the voting machines? - Keith Millea - 21-10-2012 Weekend Edition October 19-21, 2012 Lessons from the Early History of the Church of Latter Day Saints Beware the Mormon in the Grass by CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM In the beginning, as we know, was the Word of one Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Mormon Church, finder of the so-called Golden Plates from which he was able to translate the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith today in Mormon theology is considered "the prophet, priest and king." When Mitt Romney avows "My faith is the faith of my fathersI will be true to them," the father he invokes is Smith. This should be highly troubling. In the few authoritative biographies of the prophet Smith the ones not censored by the Mormon establishment he comes off both as a good-natured grifter and a venomous sociopath. Kay Burningham, ex-Mormon and author of "An American Fraud: One Lawyer's Case against Mormonism," writes that Mormonism "was founded on deception, and continues to build upon that deception." Its founders Joseph Smith and family "were opportunists, driven to create an organization where they could acquire the social status and financial resources that they lacked." Historian and ex-Mormon Will Bagley, author of many books of Mormon history, says Mormonism can be interpreted critically as "a religious Ponzi scheme and swindle." The swindle starts in 1829, after Joe Smith claims to "find" the Golden Plates buried in a mound in upstate New York. According to Smith, the story on the plates had been carved in 421 A.D. by a lost tribe of white people living among Native Americans. Smith was mighty pleased: He had found God's word, and he would bring the good news to the world. Smith, a semi-literate farm boy schooled in the soaring language of the Bible, had of course invented the Book of Mormon out of his perfervid imagination. This was no small achievement. He was a smart guy like most grifters. And he had a family schooling in the art of cheating the gullible: His father, Joseph Sr., had been repeatedly charged with currency counterfeiting in Vermont in the 1820s. Joseph Jr. himself was hauled into court in the northeastern U.S. on multiple occasions, accused of confidence games and charged with fraud. He was described in a New York court proceeding, in 1826, as "a disorderly person and an impostor." One of his preferred cons involved the help of his brother Hyrum. While visiting a neighboring household, Hyrum would secretly hide a valuable heirloom. When days later the victim complained that they could not find the prized object, Hyrum came to the rescue: He volunteered his brother Joe Jr. to show up, for a small fee, and put "magic stones" into a hat. Joe would then put the hat over his face, and stare into the stone-filled darkness to see where the lost object was the location of which his faithful brother had already provided. Smith said his ethical rule was, "When the Lord commands, do it." This was convenient, as it was decreed, by Joseph Smith, that the Lord would only communicate with you guessed it Joseph Smith. Early on, he receives a message from the Lord about "plural marriage": God commanded that all Mormon men, especially Joseph Smith, take multiple wives and establish the tradition of Mormon polygamy. Even his wife at the time, the first among many, was skeptical. On and on it goes. The Mormon sect grows throughout the 1830s and 1840s, and so do the scams: Land theft, bank fraud, cattle rustling. Historian Will Bagley describes what happened when the Mormons, fleeing westward, settled in Missouri and Illinois: "After stirring up a religious civil war in Missouri and being exiled to Illinois, Smith founded a kingdom on the Mississippi at Nauvoo, Illinois. Having secured a charter that made him ruler of a city state and a wealthy land developer, Smith raised a private army, made himself America's first lieutenant general since George Washington, and began seducing women and barely pubescent girls with an abandon that would make Bill Clinton blush." Other Mormon converts also began to look askance at sainted Joe, and today their accounts read like those of cult escapees. "When I embraced Mormonism, I conscientiously believed it to be of God," wrote a disaffected convert in 1831. "I now know Mormonism to be a delusion." Mostly what the church wanted, as with modern-day cults, was the property and cash of converts, along with their free labor. Joseph Smith's own personal secretary watched the fleecing of those newly drawn into the fold and concluded that Smith and other church fathers were "confirmed Infidels, who have not the fear of God before their eyes. They lie by revelation, swindle by revelation, cheat and defraud by revelation." Smith ended up murdered by a lynch mob in Illinois in 1844. It's not a surprising turn, given the level of animosity that Mormon criminality had evoked among non-Mormons the "filthy Gentiles" who were Mormons' preferred victims. The Mormons fled still further west, looking for the Holy Land, the Zion of prophecy, where they could settle without interference from the Gentiles. They discovered Zion in the stony sunblasted wilderness of Utah, where the new prophet, Brigham Young, soon ordered the slaughter of 150 men, women and children traveling across Mormon territory in the southern part of the state. This was the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, prompted by an apocalyptic hysteria that the US government was planning to invade Utah and destroy Brigham Young's people. The apocalypse never came to pass; the US government did not care to crush the Mormons. Meanwhile, 150 innocent people on a wagon train bound for California had been rounded up and murdered in cold blood, their bodies buried by Mormon authorities to cover up the evidence. By the mid-1850s, W.A.F. Magraw, a personal friend of President Franklin Pierce, would conclude that civil law in the Mormon territory was "overshadowed and neutralized [by an] ecclesias­tical organization, as despotic, dangerous and damnable as has ever been known to exist in any country…all alike are set upon by the self-constituted theocracy, whose laws, or rather whose conspiracies, are framed in dark corners." An early official historian of the Mormon theocracy, John Corrill, who would later repudiate the church, had also seen Mormonism from the inside. Corrill accused the Mormon leadership of "bad management, selfishness, seeking for riches, honor, and dominion, tyrannizing over the people, and striving constantly after power and property." Laws undermined by conspiracies; outrageous privilege coupled with unbounded greed and power-maddened mismanagement this sounds a lot like a description of Corporate America today, which perhaps explains why our current Mormon moment is really about Mormonism's engagement and success in the corporatocracy. In this context, think about Mitt Romney: Here is a man who, as head of the leveraged buy-out firm Bain Capital, got rich as an opportunistic "vulture capitalist," exploiting and plundering the hard work of others. Romney indeed keeps the faith of his fathers. Christopher Ketcham writes for Harper's, the American Prospect, Orion, and many other magazines. He can be reached at cketcham99@mindspring.com http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/19/beware-the-mormon-in-the-grass/ Who owns the voting machines? - Peter Lemkin - 21-10-2012 [quote=Magda Hassan]Didn't some one say it's not who they vote for but who counts the votes that really matters? [QUOTE]Oct. 18, 2012 If the Romney's can't win legally, they'll take over Ohio's electronic voting machines through investments, a direct conflict of interest in a contentious state in this election. The new owners of Ohio's voting machines under the brand name HART Intercivic is none other than Tagg Romney the son of one of the candidates Mitt Romney. In recent weeks Tagg has taken a more "active role in his father's campaign management" but when you look further, he also has a major problem with that role. By virtue of conflict of interest alone, this role should be investigated by the DOJ preferably involving the addition of the FBI, Homeland Security and the CIA to ensure this connection will not endanger the vote in Ohio and other states. After all isn't the security of an election both state and federal authorities responsibility to ensure the election is not stolen, tampered, or results altered? Tagg Romney and Hart InterCivic Voting Machines -Oct 18/2012
Tagg Romney the heir to the Romney fortunes (through Vulture Capitalism) is a chip off the old block and his dad scored big destroying American jobs through leveraging profitable US companies. Unfortunately for the employees of these companies they lost their jobs to cheaper labor in China sweat factories. In 2008, after Romney lost the 2008 bid for President, it was all clear for Mitt Romney's son Tagg Romney to invest in a company called Solamere Capital which is a direct subsidiary of Allen Stanford's Bank and investment companies. Solamere Capital Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in jail for one of the biggest 8 billion dollar ponzi scheme. The funds were never recovered for investors, and the SEC has never said Tagg Romney was not under investigation for his investments thereafter. Tagg Romney tapped into Mitt Romney's Rolodex of wealthy associates, political donors, wealthy investors and in particular Mitt Romney's campaign fundraiser: Spencer Zwick. Think Progress- Romney Family Investment -Ponzi Schemer Allen Stanford The 10 million seed funds funds were said to have come from one of Ann Romney's Blind Family Trust accounts which aren't so blind after all. That seed money was also in the name of Mitt Romney and profits were made through this investment when Mitt partnered with his number one son. The Voting Machine Connection to Ohio and Romney Family Investments Bain Capital, Solamere Capital both of which are major investments for both Mitt and Tagg Romney are connected to many private equity investments. As Lee Fang points out in his detailed analysis of the Romney investments "Many of these private equityowned companies rely on federal and state contracts, from HIG Capital's Hart Intercivic, a voting machine company, to EnviroFoam Technologies, a biological and chemical decontamination firm that does business with the US military and is owned by Peterson Partners, a private equity firm listed in the Solamere prospectus." Solarmere's tangled web of investments now includes Hart Intercivic voting machines which will be used in Cincinnati Ohio says Truth Out which could guarantee Mitt Romney the White House. The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines- They Are Easily Hacked Previous elections The State of Ohio is Ground Zero for the White House, in particular Hamilton County a repeat of the George Bush election in 2004 would be devastating to the Obama campaign. Truth Out Quote: "The widespread use of electronic voting machines from ES&S, and of Diebold software maintained by Triad, allowed Blackwell to electronically flip a 4% Kerry lead to a 2% Bush victory in the dead of election night. ES&S, Diebold and Triad were all owned or operated by Republican partisans. In election 2004, the shift of more than 300,000 votes after 12:20 am election night was a virtual statistical impossibility. It was engineered by Michael Connell, an IT specialist long affiliated with the Bush Family. Blackwell gave Connell's Ohio-based GovTech the contract to count Ohio's votes, which was done on servers housed in the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thus the Ohio vote tally was done on servers that also carried the e-mail for Karl Rove and the national Republican Party. Connell died in a mysterious plane crash in December, 2008, after being subpoenaed in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit focused on how the 2004 election was decided (disclosure: we were attorney and plaintiff in that suit). HART INTERCIVIC MACHINES ARE KNOWN FOR GLITCHES, FAILURES AND COUNTING ERRORS: The fact that the State of Ohio is now run by Republicans, the voting machines by republican operatives and keenly related to the Romney Family spells out: A Department of Justice Investigation now, not after the election. All voting machines should be securely monitored because they are really easy to hack into by anyone including the parties that have a big stake in winning on November 6, 2012. We showed this in our previous articles: The Hacking of Your Vote and Democracy July 8, 2012 For More Read: The Nation By Lee Fang -Romney Family Recipe for Crony Capitalism VIDEOS: HOW EASY IT IS TO HACK A VOTING MACHINE- BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Oct. 28, 2006 [/QUOTE] Sick stuff....but I'll bet it won't make MSM.....the way elections are stolen is hush-hush...even when its a family affair! The Romney family and the Bush family have a lot in common.....beware! Who owns the voting machines? - Lauren Johnson - 24-10-2012 This morning, NBC News' top election expert, Chuck Todd, tweeted the following... Chuck Todd The voting machine conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther garbage. Todd was responding, no doubt, to the many folks who have been justifiably concerned of late, since it was discovered that a bunch of Bain Capital investors, led by Mitt Romney's son Tagg, via a company called H.I.G. Capital (believed to stand for Hart Intercivic Group) took over control of Hart Intercivic, the nation's third largest voting machine company, in 2011. The Austin-based Hart company, =All+Types&vendor[]=Hart+InterCivic&model[]=All+Models&vvpat=all&submit=Search&rowspp=20000&topicText=&stateText=]according to VerifiedVoting.org's database, supplies electronic voting machines and paper ballot tabulators that will be used to tally votes in the Presidential Election this year in all or parts of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington. I offered my point of view about those concerns earlier this month, explaining that it was not just the private ownership of Hart's machines by Romney backers which voters should be concerned about, but the private ownership of the similar systems in all fifty states that will once again be used to tabulate the results of this year's Presidential Election with little --- and very often zero --- possibility of oversight by the public or even by election officials. Todd does an extraordinary disservice to the electorate with Tweets like the one above, and I'd be happy to come on his daily MSNBC show any time to explain why, as I have told him via Twitter in response to the above. As Todd has not responded in kind, and to expand upon my response to Todd there, I'd like to ask him these few respectful questions... Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when paper ballot optical-scan tabulators made by Sequoia Voting Systems in Palm Beach County declared incorrect results of three different races last March, including declaring two losing candidates to be the "winners"?
I could go on and on, obviously, but I won't. You're welcome. There are some 10 years worth of articles at The BRAD BLOG that folks can peruse to determine the facts underscoring my concerns and those of the others who have legitimately expressed them to you, Chuck Todd, about private, unaccountable corporations --- owned by associates of Mitt Romney or by anybody else --- having so much unoverseeable control of our once-public electoral system.Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the Canadian firm, Dominion Voting, which now owns Sequoia Voting Systems admitted the failure in Palm Beach was caused by a bug in all versions of its central tabulation software which will be used to tabulate the Presidential Election (and many others) on November 6th this year in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when, despite using Dominion/Sequoia's recommended "fix", the same problem occurred yet again in Palm Beach County's August primary elections, as their Supervisor of Elections recently explained to me on air? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when 16,632 votes were found unaccounted for when those same machines were first used in Palm Beach County back in 2008? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when eight (8) top election officials --- including the County Clerk, a Circuit Court Judge and the School Superintendent --- in Clay County, KY were sentenced last year to 156 years in federal prison for gaming elections, including changing the votes of voters on ES&S electronic touch-screen voting machines? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the President of Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (by then renamed Premier Election Systems, which is now owned by the Canadian firm Dominion Voting) admitted in 2008 that the company's GEMS central tabulation software, used in some 34 states, does not tabulate votes correctly and routinely drops thousands of them when they are uploaded to the central server? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when Diebold/Premier's spokesman admitted to the CA Secretary of State during a 2009 hearing that the supposedly permanent "audit logs" in all versions of its GEMS central tabulation system fail to record the deletion of ballots, after it was discovered that their electronic tabulator had failed to tabulate hundreds of paper ballots in a Humboldt County election (or to even notify system administrators that it had deleted those ballots)? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the CA Sec. of State decertified federally-certified electronic voting and tabulation systems made by Diebold, Sequoia and Hart Intercivic in 2007 after a state-commissioned team of computer science and security experts from the University of California, Livermore National Laboratories and elsewhere "demonstrated that the physical and technological security mechanisms" for all of the state's electronic voting systems (also used across the rest of the country) "were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the elections results and of the systems that provide those results" and that their "independent teams of analysts were able to bypass both physical and software security measures in every system tested"? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the 2007 landmark study commissioned by OH's then Democratic Sec. of State, found "Ohio's electronic voting systems have 'critical security failures' which could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State" and when she (unsuccessfully) recommended, along with the then Republican Speaker of the Senate, who is now the state's Republican Sec. of State, that all touch-screen systems in the state be decertified due to concerns of, as she told The BRAD BLOG, "viruses that can be inserted into [Ohio's e-voting and tabulation] system through something as simple as a PDA [Personal Digital Assistant] and a magnet and then the cards are passed from machine to machine almost like Typhoid Mary" so that "If there is malicious software, like a virus put into the system, it can not only affect the machines at the polling places, it can affect the tabulation that occurs at the server and it can also affect future elections if it's not detected"? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when the New York Daily News discovered in 2012 that hundreds of paper ballots at just one precinct in the Bronx went uncounted in 2010 during the September primary (failure rate of 70%) and the November general election (failure rate of 54%) on their brand new ES&S DS200 paper ballot optical-scanners, which are also used in OH, AZ, MI and elsewhere? Was it 'conspiracy' garbage when the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released a warning in 2011 from a "Formal Investigation Report" that those same systems failed to count paper ballots correctly, on the heels of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), OH's previous finding that 10% of those machines failed during pre-election testing in 2010? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when Oakland County, MI wrote a letter of concern to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), seeking advice in 2008 after finding their ES&S M-100 optical scanners "yielded different results each time" the "same ballots were run through the same machines" during pre-election testing? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when Princeton University discovered in 2006 that they could, in seconds time, implant a virus onto Diebold touch-screen systems used in dozens of states which could then spread itself from machine to machine and result in an entire county's election being flipped with little chance of detection? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when a computer security expert hacked a memory card on a Diebold paper ballot optical-scan system and flipped the results of a mock election (see the hack and its results as captured in HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy here) in such a way that only a hand-count of the paper ballots in the election could reveal the true results? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when a CIA cybersecurity expert testified to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission(EAC) in 2009 that e-voting was not secure, "that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results" and that "wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to...make bad things happen"? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' that the Vulnerability Assessment Team (which also monitors nuclear facilities) at Argonne National Laboratory (the non-profit research lab operated by the University of Chicago for the Dept. of Energy) released a report earlier this year finding that Diebold's touch-screen systems and, according to the team's lead scientist, "pretty much every electronic voting machine", can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, or just $26 if you want to do it remotely? Was it 'conspiracy garbage' when, in Volusia County, FL's 2000 Presidential Election a paper-based optical-scan tabulator made by Global Elections Management Systems (GEMS, thereafter purchased by Diebold to become Diebold Election Systems, Inc.) tallied negative 16,022 votes for Al Gore thanks to a supposed "software flaw" which has never been explained by anyone, and which Leon County (Tallahassee), FL's Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho --- the man, so well respected by both major parties, that he was placed in charge of the aborted 2000 Presidential Election recount in Florida --- believes was a purposeful hack of the electronic tabulation system which is now used in hundreds of counties in dozens of states? But, to misinform your 272,035 Twitter followers, not to mention your millions of viewers on television, that concerns about oft-failed, easily-manipulated electronic voting and tabulation systems are little more than "conspiracies" which "belong in the same category as the Trump birther garbage" is an extraordinary disservice to your readers, your viewers and the U.S. electorate as a whole. They deserve a much better understanding of our electoral system from someone such as yourself, who is relied upon by so many as an expert in these matters. Again, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these concerns with you on your Daily Rundown show on MSNBC any time. If, in fact, you are correct, that these concerns are little more than 'conspiracy garbage', you will do the electorate a great service by having me on, and putting me in my place once and for all by explaining why. If these concerns are not 'conspiracy garbage', as I would argue, you would be performing a great service to the electorate by helping the electorate understand why they are not, and what voters may be able to do at this point to help minimize the possibilities of their votes not being counted accurately or transparently, or even at all, this November 6th. Either way, the electorate will end up being much better informed before this year's Presidential Election, which is, after all, as I'm sure we can both agree, the most important core function of your job --- and mine --- as journalists. http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9651 Who owns the voting machines? - Adele Edisen - 24-10-2012 Magda, There is a petition circulating online to our Justice Department to look into this matter. Copy below: Subject: Voting machines tied to the Romneys could decide the election in Ohio Dear Friend, If this year's presidential election comes down to the electoral votes in Ohio, the deciding votes could be cast on electronic voting machines manufactured by a company - Hart Intercivic - with deep financial ties to the Romney family. Hart Intercivic is majority owned by H.I.G. Capital which controls two of the five seats on the Hart Intercivic board. An investment fund with deep ties to the Romney family and the Mitt Romney for president campaign, H.I.G. Capital was founded by Tony Tamer, a major bundler for the Romney campaign, and it is one of the largest partners of Solamere Capital, an investment fund founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney's chief fundraiser from the 2008 presidential campaign. This makes the Romney family part owner of the voting machine company, through it's interest in H.I.G. Capital. A 2007 study conducted by Ohio's Secretary of State showed that Hart Intercivic's touch screen voting machines could be easily corrupted. I just signed a petition telling the Department of Justice to not let Republicans steal the election in Ohio with Romney-owned voting machines. Click on the link below to find out more and sign the petition. http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/romney_ohio/?r_by=49254-5922087-vuFmISx&rc=paste1 Who owns the voting machines? - Lauren Johnson - 24-10-2012 Adele Edisen Wrote:Magda, The demands of the deep political would never let any politician run an election. IMO Who owns the voting machines? - Adele Edisen - 24-10-2012 In response to Lauren Johnson's post above: NBC Commentator: Voting Machine Problems a Conspiracy Theory May I suggest that you contact Lawrence O'Donnell (The Last Word Show on MSNBC), or Ed Schultz (The ED Show on MSNBC), or Reverend Al Sharpton (Politics Nation Show on MSNBC), or Rachel Maddow (TRMS on MSNBC), or Marvin Bashir (on MSNBC), or Chris Matthews (Hardball Show on MSNBC). I think any one of these people would be interested. Adele Who owns the voting machines? - Adele Edisen - 24-10-2012 Lauren Johnson Wrote:Adele Edisen Wrote:Magda, The petition is to the Department of Justice which has an interest in protecting the Votng Rights Law of 1965. Adele |