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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

Vanishing Act

By Chris Floyd

09/22/03: (Moscow Times) It's a shell game, with money, companies and
corporate brands switching in a blur of buyouts and bogus fronts. It's a
sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed
Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers -- and
presidential family members -- lie down together in the slime. It's a
hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly programmed
computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically
partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how
the United States, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And
it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the
United States -- no matter what the people of the United States might want.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players --
Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia -- with a fourth, Science Applications
International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies -- all of them
hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid -- have been given billions of
dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting
machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems --
many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all --
are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate
whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other
universities.

The technology had a trial run in the 2002 midterm elections. In Georgia,
serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator
were both unseated in what the media called "amazing" upsets, with results
showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In
computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale -- a
replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died days before the
vote -- was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient
"glitches" in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the
Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother"
Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly "glitched" local election went
to court to have the computers examined -- but the case was thrown out by a
judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the "trade
secrets" of the private companies who make them.

Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: The corporate
lines -- even the bloodlines -- of these "competitors" are so intricately
mixed. For example, at Diebold -- whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top
Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home
state's votes to Bush next year -- the election division is run by Bob
Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The
brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard
Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing
"steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.

Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist "Christian
Reconstructionist" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of
American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of
"Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for
homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners
and -- we kid you not -- slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical
laws."

Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company
counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an
amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company
of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998
gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint
installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.

Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it
was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to
jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms.
Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving
immunized testimony against state officials. The British-owned company's
corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn -- a partner of the
Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war
pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.

Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the
vote-counting game, both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass,
including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney and
Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci, and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC's history
of fraud charges and security lapses in its electronic systems hasn't
prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA
contractors -- and will doubtless pose little obstacle to its entrance into
election engineering.

The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help
America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing
for the act was a consortium of arms dealers -- those disinterested
corporate citizens -- including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. The
bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized "ineligible voter
purge" system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from
the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that
accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's
share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts.

The unelected Bush Regime now controls the government, the military, the
judiciary -- and the machinery of democracy itself. Absent some unlikely
great awakening by the co-opted dullards of the corporate media, next
November the last shreds of a genuine American republic will disappear -- at
the push of a button.


Annotations
E-Voting: How it Can Put the Wrong Candidate in Office
Common Dreams, Sept. 3, 2003

The Theft of Your Vote is Just a Chip Away
Thom Hartmann, July 31, 2003

How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election
Infernal Press, September 2003

Now Your Vote is the Property of a Private Corporation
Thom Hartmann, March 11, 2003

The Diebold AccuVote TS Should be Decertified
USENEX Security Symposium, Aug. 6, 2003

Who Counts the Votes?
Southern Exposure, Winter 2002/2003

Florida Invests $24 Million in Wireless Voting Machines
Wireless News Factor, Jan. 31, 2002

Diebold Internal Mail Confirms U.S. Vote Vulnerabilities
Scoop, Sept. 12,2002

Voting Machine Controversy as Diebold Chief Backs Bush
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Aug. 28, 2003

The Voting Machine Fiasco: SAIC, VoteHere and Diebold
Online Journal, Aug. 20, 2003

Hacking Democracy?
Salon.com, Feb. 20, 2003

Possible Flaw Triggers Electronic Voting Concerns
Houston Chronicle, Sept. 11, 2003

Piecing it Together
Black Box Voting, Aug. 25, 2003

Bay of Pigs 2000: The November Surprise
Madcow Morning News, Dec. 26, 2000

Slavery Under God's Laws
The Institute for Christian Economics,

Stoning: Integral to Commandment Against Murder
The Institute for Christian Economics,

World Conquest: The Obligation of Christian Politics
The Changing of the Guard, Dominion Press,

An Anthology of Reconstructist Thought
Christian Reconstructionism, November 2002

Judicial Warfare: Christian Reconstructionism and its Blueprint for Dominion
Crown Rights Press, 2003



British Firm Buys Controlling Interest in Sequoia Voting Systems
Eastbay Business Times, May 29, 2003

A High-Tech Ambush
Eco Talk, Oct. 29, 2002

Louisiana Election Commissioner Pleads Guilty in Kickback Scandal
The Oak Ridger, Nov. 28, 2000

Pipeline Partnership Take Under: Madison Dearborn and Carlyle
Meter Reader Energy Stock Analysis, April 24, 2003

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