(Note: Christopher Bollyn is one of the greatest reporters in
the world. He is independent and intrepid. He is what Geraldo
Rivera and Dan Rather pretend to be. Bollyn reported on, and contributed
to, our "Citizens for a Fair Vote Count" Convention which was
held at the Greater Cincinnati Airport in late August, 2000. This
article explains, as far as possible, the nuts and bolts of how
99% of the counties in the USA incredibly delegate the "counting"
of our votes to a few private companies, who "count" the votes
in secret. We at votefraud.org believe that these few private
companies now fix every key election in collaboration with the
5 major TV Networks, the AP Wire Service, and the Ruling Elite
behind all these entities. This Ruling Elite also controls the
Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee
-- which entities look the other way and NEVER protest this absolutely
un-American, unconstitutional, and criminal arrangement.)
By Christopher Bollyn of American Free Press
When the polls closed in Chicago, American Free Press was at the
Cook County clerk?s office to see how the secretive private company
that operates the voting machines in America?s third largest city
actually controls the counting of the votes.
CHICAGO, Illinois: The morning after Election Day, the Democratic
vice presidential candidate John Edwards promised the nation that
the Democrats would "make sure that every vote counts, and that
every vote is counted."
Later in the day, as the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen.
John Kerry, conceded defeat to George W. Bush, his 9th cousin
and fellow "Bonesman" from Yale?s elite secret society, The Order
of the Skull & Bones, he said: "In America, it is vital that every
vote count."
Kerry and Edwards, however, conceded defeat before some 170,000
to 250,000 provisional ballots from the state of Ohio, which could
have changed the outcome of the election, had been counted. As
the public has been led to believe, the final tally came down
to a near 50-50 split and it was the "swing state" of Ohio that
made the difference.
But how were the votes actually counted across the nation on November
2?
VOTING IN CHICAGO
On Election Day, voters in Cook County (Ill.) were among the 60
million Americans who voted with machines made by Election Systems
& Software, a secretive and private company based in Omaha.
ES&S, as its known, calls itself "the world's largest and most
experienced provider of total election management solutions."
According to the company?s own figures, 42 percent of all registered
voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on Election
Day.
ES&S sells its "end-to-end election management suite of solutions"
to replace traditional voting methods -- and election officials
-- with what it calls "one-stop-shop" full service election coordination
from start to finish.
What this means on Election Day is that ES&S, a private company,
manages everything about the voting, from voter registration,
the printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines,
the counting and tabulation of the votes, and the final reporting
of the results for 60 million Americans in 47 states.
Four years after first revealing the flaws inherent in the insecure
ES&S electronic voting machines used in Cook County, American
Free Press went to the county clerk?s office to observe how ES&S
controls the counting of the votes for America?s third largest
city, Chicago, and the suburban area around it.
Scott Burnham, spokesman for the county clerk, had informed me
that the vote count is open to the public and that press credentials
would not be required. Shortly after arriving, I ran into Burnham
and David Orr, the county clerk, in the hallway.
Although I had arrived just shortly before the polls closed at
7 p.m., I was the only member of the public or the press around
except for a couple Associated Press (AP) reporters in the far
corner of the room. They were busy setting up their laptop to
the ES&S computer in the backroom, which provided them with "direct
feed" of the results.
I was surprised to see so few people attending such an important
event. In France, scores of citizens watch the vote count in
each polling station.
While the results were coming in, the AP "reporter" read a novel
while her laptop did the communicating.
When I went to talk to the AP reporter, Burnham quickly appeared
and told me to leave. "You should talk to AP," he said.
"She is AP," I replied.
"She just works for AP," he said.
Clearly the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe
computer was something Burnham did not want me to discuss.
Dane Placko, a local reporter for the Fox News network, told AFP
that, "Fox gets direct feed."
Any actual counting of the votes by citizens is very rare in the
United States except for a few counties in Montana and other states
where paper ballots are still hand-counted. In most counties
the ballots are treated as input data to be processed through
computer systems controlled by private companies like ES&S.
In Cook County the ballot is inevitably a cluttered punch card
with nearly 100 votes. After voting for the president and vice-president,
a senator, and a Congressman, the voter has to wade through pages
of choices to vote for some 80 local officials from the sanitation
board to the state?s general assembly. Every voter had to vote
on nearly 80 judges.
As I voted, every ballot that was fed into the ES&S machine registered
as an "undervote," as did mine.
Rather than holding separate elections for national and local
officials, as is done in most countries, the Cook County ballot
is extremely long and complicated. Officials who support electronic
voting systems give the complexity of the ballot as the main reason
why voting machines are necessary -- because it would take too
much time to count the votes manually.
After calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha
and Chicago, I can say it is the most secretive company I have
ever come across. In August, I visited ES&S company headquarters
on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha.
Although the company says it is the largest voting machine company
in the United States, they were unable to provide any information
about their company or their products. The ownership of the company
is a closely-guarded secret. I asked to meet with Todd Urosevich,
one of the two brothers that founded the company.
Bob and Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark
in the early 1980s. Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold
Election Systems, a competitor of ES&S and the second largest
U.S. manufacturer of electronic voting machines.
Together, the computerized ballot scanners and touch-screen voting
machines systems made by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent
of all votes cast in the recent U.S. presidential election.
As ES&S had no media relations person available and Todd Urosevich
was not willing to be interviewed, the company?s chief financial
officer Tom O?Brien finally appeared. O?Brien, clearly displeased
with my visit and questions, refused to provide any information
about the company.
Although I was ill on Election Day, I knew I had to go to the
county clerk?s office to observe "counting" of the vote. It is,
after all, the only "counting" open to the public. What I saw
in Chicago, however, only made me more nauseous.
The only "vote count" the press or public can observe in Chicago
is what is projected on screens. The opening screen read: ES&S
Automatic Election Returns, Release 35, Under License to the City
of Chicago, Serial No. 0004, Copyright 1987.
Carl Zimmerman, technical supervisor for the clerk?s office, said
that the computer that ran the system was in the back, "in the
ES&S room," he said.
At 7 p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk?s computer
staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor, where
the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind
him was Rick Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the first results.
Thurman seemed surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S.
He said that the company had about 6 engineers running the computer
in the back room. He then checked himself, saying he had said
too much. Later I asked Lin who was actually operating the computer
that was generating the results being shown on the monitors. "ES&S
is running the mainframe for all of this," Lin said pointing to
the television displays.
In the press room in the back I noticed stacks of boxes containing
"Votamatic" voting machines and "pre-punched" ballots printed
by ES&S of Addison, Texas, for the different precincts in Cook
County. In the rear hallway behind the press room was the ES&S
room. Only ES&S personnel were allowed into the room.
When I poked around in the hallway and peeked into the ES&S room
an armed marshal and ES&S employee quickly appeared. In no condition
for a confrontation, I made myself scarce. I met a couple reporters
from CLTV, a local cable channel of WGN. One of the reporters
asked about my interest in the Chicago tallies. I said I was
interested to see how a private company runs the elections in
Chicago.
Seemingly unaware of how ES&S operates elections in Cook County,
I explained the basics. "I?ve observed elections across Europe,"
I added, "from France and Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere
in Europe voting is done on paper ballots that are counted by
the citizens -- except Holland."
Obviously uncomfortable with this discussion the reporter responded,
"I?m glad I?m not in Serbia. I don?t mind if a machine counts
the votes."
You've heard of the song The Day the Music Died? Well, today
is the Day Democracy Died. Actually, that day probably came about
4 years ago, the first time Bush stole the election. Or even
earlier, as I will reveal....
Once upon a time there were two brothers: Bob and Todd Urosevich.
In the 1980's, with the financial backing of the right-wing extremist
Christian billionaire Howard Ahmanson, Bob and Todd founded a
company called American Information Systems (AIS) that built voting
machines. They were also certified to count votes.
It is interesting to note that back then there was no federal
agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting
machine industry. Even more interesting is the fact that this
is still true today
. Not even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has a complete
list of all the companies that count votes in U.S. elections.
But let us get back to our story....
In 1992 a conservative Nebraskan fellow called Chuck Hagel became
chairman of AIS as well as chairman of the McCarthy Group, a private
investment bank. This all happened shortly after he stopped working
for Bush Sr.'s administration as Head of the Private Sector Council.
In 1995 Hagel resigned from AIS and a year later ran for Senate,
with the founder of the McCarthy Group as his campaign manager.
In 1996 Chuck Hagel became the first Republican to ever win a
Nebraska senatorial campaign in 24 years
, carrying virtually every demographic group, including African
American precincts that had never voted Republican. The only
company certified to count votes in Nebraska at the time was AIS.
But getting back to our two brothers Urosevich....
In 1997 Bob and Todd decide to buy the Dallas-based Business Records
Corp. (BRC) and merge it with AIS. BRC was partially owned by
Cronus Industries, a company with connections to the oil- and
mineral-rich Hunt brothers of Texas.
The company created from this merger was Electronic Systems Software
(ES&S). Today ES&S is the largest voting machine company in the
United States and Todd Urosevich is its vice-president.
In 2003 the Senate Ethics Committee forced Chuck Hagel to reveal
the fact that he had $1 million to $5 million in investment in
the McCarthy Group, a fact he'd previously neglected to mention.
The McCarthy Group also happens to be a major owner of ES&S.
But let's get back to the two brothers, shall we? What happened
to Bob?
Well, Bob Urosevich became president of Diebold, the corporation
that makes the 45,000 touch-screen voting machines used in Ohio
and other states. In 2002 Diebold purchased Global Election Systems,
a company that itself bought a company called AccuVote back in
1991.
Besides voting machines, Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners,
and ticket-dispensing machines, all of which come with an auditable
paper trail. (Can you imagine trying to sell Home Depot a checkout
scanning system that has no paper trail?)
None of Diebold's electronic voting machines are equipped with
vote-verification systems. In other words, you cannot audit these
machines.
Diebold is now the third largest voting machine company in America.
Together, Diebold and ES&S count 80% of all votes
in the United States.
Almost 30% of all votes are on non-auditable touch screen voting
machines and computerized ballot scanners will count another 57.6%
of the votes, including absentee ballots.
But wait, there more....
The Chairman and CEO of Diebold, "Wally" O' Dell, is a major Bush
campaign donor, having helped raise over a quarter million for
Bush's 2004 campaign. In an August 2003 fundraising letter to
some 100 wealthy friends, Diebold's chairman and CEO wrote,
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to
the president next year."
Most of Ohio uses Diebold voting machines.
Well, maybe he chose the wrong words. Perhaps the ethics of these
voting companies are beyond reproach. Let us see.
During the 2000 presidential elections, Diebold made 16,000 presidential
votes "vanish" in one Florida county.
Back in 2002 Diebold supplied the state of Georgia with brand
new electronic voting machines. That was when incumbent Democratic
Governor Ray Barnes was defeated and the Republicans won for the
first time in 134 years. The poll results showed an amazing 12-point
shift that took place in the last 48 hours
.
Diebold was subsequently sued for applying a last-minute code
patch to the machines that was never reviewed. In another strange
turn of events, that code was also deleted right after the election
and the suit fell through.
Earlier this year California sued Diebold for fraud and decertified
its voting machines.
But what about the other 20% of the votes? Who counts them?
America's second largest voting corporation is Sequoia Voting
Systems. This company is owned by the British company De La Rue,
who also owns 20% of the British National Lottery. In 1995 the
SEC filed suit against Sequoia for inflating revenue and pre-tax
profits.
In 1999 charges were filed by the Justice Department against Sequoia
in a massive corruption case that sent top Louisiana state officials
to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through the Mob. Sequoia's
executives were given immunity in exchange for testimony against
state officials.
And in fourth place we have Science Applications International
Corporation Fourth (SAIC). This secretive defense contractor
became involved in counting American votes through Admiral Bill
Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney.
Despite a history of fraud charges and security lapses in its
electronic systems, SAIC is now one of the largest Pentagon and
CIA contractors.
Then there are some bit players.
Last year, two of Diebold's top executives, Howard Van Pelt and
Larry Ensminger, moved over to Advanced Voting Solutions, which
is the new name of the scandal-ridden voting company Shoup Voting
Solutions.
In 1971 Shoup Voting Machine Co. had been indicted for bribing
politicians in Florida. In 1979 Ransom Shoup was convicted of
conspiracy and obstruction of justice during an FBI inquiry into
a Philadelphia election. Shoup got a mere three-year suspended
sentence.
In the meantime, Philadelphia bought new voting machines from
a new voting machine company, Danaher-Guardian. But this company
only sells voting machines formerly known as the "Shouptronic."
But wait, there's more....
After the 2000 election, Cal Tech and MIT conducted a study to
find that between 1.5 million and 2 million votes were not counted
because of confusing paper ballots or faulty equipment. That's
when Bush decided to pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
One of the main goals of the HAVA is the "Replacement of punch
card and lever voting machines.? With what? Electronic touch
screen voting machines, the ones that cannot be audited.
How do you feel about your vote now?
Suspicious Election Results
Below is a list in no real order (it's happening so fast) of sites
showing some extremely suspicious election numbers, some of which
are currently being investigated by the FBI....
If you still think everything was played fair and square, check
out some these strange Florida election numbers, reported by Buck
Mulligan:
2000
2004
Bush 2,912,790
Bush 3,836,216
Gore 2,912,253
Kerry 3,459,293
Nader 97,421
Nader 32,035
Other 40,193
Other 28,382
TOTAL
5,963,657
7,355,296
Which means 1,392,639 new voters (99% precincts counted, no provisionals
or absentees).
So there are 1.39 million new voters in Florida and 77,197 fewer
third-party votes but Kerry loses by 376,923 votes? Which would
mean he lost a huge majority of them or he lost a huge majority
of regular voters, and by much than Gore lost.
The exit polls showed that Kerry had way more Hispanic and Cuban
supporters than Gore. Also most exit polls in Florida had Kerry
leading,
but in the end Kerry lost by a whopping 5%?
Some more suspicious Florida voting statistics are shown here.
Brandon Adams of Western Washington U. also did a great job of
examining the bizarre Florida voting results. Peter Smith at
Ledge of Liberty has done an admirable job of charting the blatant
fraud in several states and the Brad Blog has compiled a nice
list of sites with more voter fraud information.
And then there's accounts of possible fraud in Ohio that the press,
including the Washington Post, is looking into. This was reported
by the valiant folks at AMERICABlog. There's even a lovely photo
of a Cincinnati poll manager putting used ballots on his Bush/Cheney-stickered
truck.
Exit polls discrepancies in Ohio are discussed by Greg Palast
at length. Other exit poll oddities in this last election are
discussed at the Blue Lemur here and here. These are also dicsussed
at eRiposte's election 2004 results.
Not only do the reports indicate that voting machines errors reported
consistently favored Bush, but it is also very suspicious that
a strong correlation exists between voter discrepancies and the
type of voting machine used.
Cuyahoga County of Ohio is also seriously questioning the validity
of some goofball election numbers, where the number of votes cast
was higher than the number of voters who showed up.
And, by the way, did you know that the international election
observers were forbidden access to the Ohio polls? I thought
that was interesting as well.