Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing
Conspiracy
By Bob Fitrakis The Columbus
Free Press
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/6/3714
25 February 2004
The Governor of Ohio, Bob
Taft, and other prominent state officials, commute to their downtown Columbus
offices on Broad Street. This is the so-called �Golden Finger,� the safe route through the majority black inner-city near
east side. The Broad Street BP station, just east of downtown, is the place
where affluent suburbanites from Bexley can stop, gas up, get their coffee and
New York Times. Those in need of cash visit BP�s Diebold manufactured CashSource+ ATM machine which
provides a paper receipt of the transaction to all customers upon request.
Many of Taft�s and President George W. Bush�s major donors, like Diebold�s current CEO Walden �Wally� O�Dell, reside in Columbus� northwest suburb Upper Arlington. O�Dell is on record stating that he
is �committed to helping Ohio deliver
its electoral votes to the President� this year. On September 26, 2003, he hosted an Ohio
Republican Party fundraiser for Bush�s re-election at his Cotswold Manor mansion. Tickets to
the fundraiser cost $1000 per couple, but O�Dell�s fundraising letter urged those
attending to �Donate or raise $10,000 for the
Ohio Republican Party.�
According to the Columbus
Dispatch: �Last year, O�Dell and his wife Patricia,
campaigned for passage of two liquor options that made their portion of Tremont
Road wet.
On November 5, Upper
Arlington residents narrowly passed measures that allowed fundraising parties
to offer more than beer, even though his 10,800-square-foot home is a
residence, a permit is required because alcohol is included in the price of
fundraising tickets. O�Dell is also allowed to serve �beer, wine and mixed drinks� at Sunday fundraisers.
O�Dell�s fund-raising letter followed on the heels of a visit to
President Bush�s Crawford Texas ranch by �Pioneers and Rangers,� the designation for people who
had raised $100,000 or more for Bush�s re-election.
If Ohio�s Republican Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell has his way, Diebold will receive a contract to supply touch
screen electronic voting machines for much of the state. None of these Diebold
machines will provide a paper receipt of the vote.
Diebold, located in North
Canton, Ohio, does its primary business in ATM and ticket-vending machines.
Critics of Diebold point out that virtually every other machine the company
makes provides a paper trail to verify the machine�s calculations. Oddly, only the
voting machines lack this essential function.
State Senator Teresa Fedor
of Toledo introduced Senate Bill 167 late last year mandating that every voting
machine in Ohio generate a �voter
verified paper audit trail.�
Secretary of State Blackwell has denounced any attempt to require a paper trail
as an effort to �derail� election reform. Blackwell�s political career is an
interesting one: he emerged as a black activist in Cincinnati supporting
municipal charter reform, became an elected Democrat, then an Independent, and
now is a prominent Republican with his eyes on the Governor�s mansion.
Voter fraud
A joint study by the
California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology following the 2000
election determined that between 1.5 and 2 million votes were not counted due
to confusing paper ballots or faulty equipment. The federal government�s solution to the problem was to
pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.
One of the law�s stated goals was �Replacement of punch card and
lever voting machines.� The new voting machines would be
high-tech touch screen computers, but if there�s no paper trail, how do you know if there�s been a computer glitch? How can
the results be trusted? And how do you recount to see if the actual votes match
the computer�s tally?
Bev Harris, author of Black
Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, argues that without a paper
trail, these machines are open to massive voter fraud. Diebold has already
placed some 50,000 machines in 37 states and their track record is causing
Harris, Johns Hopkins University professors and others great concern.
Johns Hopkins researchers at
the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold�s electronic voting software
contained �stunning flaws.� The researchers concluded that
vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access.
Diebold vigorously refuted the Johns Hopkins report, claiming the researchers
came to �a multitude of false conclusions.�
Perhaps to settle the issue,
someone illegally hacked into the Diebold Election Systems website in March
2003 and stole internal documents from the company and posted them online.
Diebold went to court to stop, according to court records, the �wholesale reproduction� of some 13,000 pages of company
material.
The Associated Press
reported in November 2003 that: �Computer programmers, ISPs and students at [at] least 20
universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology received cease and desist letters� from Diebold. A group of
Swarthmore College students launched an �electronic civil disobedience� campaign to keep the hacked
documents permanently posted on the Internet.
Harris writes that the
hacked documents expose how the mainstream media reversed their call projecting
Al Gore as winner of Florida after someone �subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some
undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush.� Hours later, the votes were
returned. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now Diebold,
reads: �I need some answers! Our
department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to
give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022
[votes] when it was uploaded.�
Another hacked internal memo, written by Talbot Iredale, Senior VP of Research
and Development for Diebold Election Systems, documents �unauthorized� replacement votes in Volusia County.
Harris also uncovered a
revealing 87-page CBS news report and noted, �According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in
Volusia was directly responsible to calling the election for Bush.� The first person to call the
election for Bush was Fox election analyst John Ellis, who had the advantage of
conferring with his prominent cousins George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb
Bush.
Incestuous relationships
Increasingly, investigative
writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold�s history for clues. The
electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations � Diebold, Election Systems &
Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count an
estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes.
In the early 1980s, brothers
Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S�s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained
financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68%
ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William
and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to
American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented
the Ahmanson family�s ties to right-wing evangelical
Christian and Republican circles.
In 2001, the Los Angeles
Times reported, �. . . primarily funded by
evangelical Christians � particularly the wealthy Ahmanson
family of Irvine � the [Discovery] institute�s $1-million annual program has
produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for
doctoral and postdoctoral research.� The chief philanthropists of the Discovery Institute,
that pushes creationist science and education in California, are Howard and
Roberta Ahmanson.
According to Group Watch, in
the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive
far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant
Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra
scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson,
heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream
U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming
on Ahmanson�s politics.
�On the right, figures such as
Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of
dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the
Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency)
and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton�s sexual indiscretions and the
suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster),� wrote The Independent last
November.
The Sunday Mail described an
individual as, �. . . a fundamentalist Christian
more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his
fortune to promote so-called traditional family values . . . by waving fortunes
under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing
his right-wing Christian agenda.
Ahmanson is also a chief
contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian
reconstruction movement. The movement�s philosophy advocates, among other things, �mandating the death penalty for
homosexuals and drunkards.�
The Ahmanson family sold
their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the
World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public
documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed
between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American
Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly
Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the
BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied
much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.
In 1996, Hagel became the
first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly
well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as
chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002
elections, Hagel�s ES&S counted an estimated
80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services,
confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept
this matter out of the public eye. Hagel�s first election victory was described as a �stunning upset� by one Nebraska newspaper.
Hagel�s official biography states, �Prior to his election to the U.S.
Senate, Hagel worked in the private sector as the President of McCarthy and
Company, an investment banking firm based in Omaha, Nebraska and served as
Chairman of the Board of American Information Systems.� During the first Bush presidency,
Hagel served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the 1990
Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (G-7 Summit).
Bob Urosevich was the Programmer
and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Election
Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created
Diebold�s original electronic voting
machine software. Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far
Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the
United States.
Like Ohio, the State of
Maryland was disturbed by the potential for massive electronic voter fraud. The
voters of that state were reassured when the state hired SAIC to monitor
Diebold�s system. SAIC�s former CEO is Admiral Bill
Owens. Owens served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and
former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who now works with George H.W. Bush at
the controversial Carlyle Group. Robert Gates, former CIA Director and close
friend of the Bush family, also served on the SAIC Board.
Diebold�s track record
Wherever Diebold and
ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair
Thompson, writing for scoop.co of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002
U.S. mid-term elections were �fixed
by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies.� The scoop investigation concluded
that: �The state where the biggest upset
occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most
electronic voting machines.�
Those machines were supplied by Diebold.
Wired News reported that �. . . a former worker in Diebold�s Georgia warehouse says the
company installed patches on its machine before the state�s 2002 gubernatorial election that
were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia
election officials.� Questions were raised in Texas
when three Republican candidates in Comal County each received exactly the same
number of votes � 18,181.
Following the 2003
California election, an audit of the company revealed that Diebold Election
Systems voting machines installed uncertified software in all 17 counties using
its equipment.
Former CIA Station Chief
John Stockwell writes that one of the favorite tactics of the CIA during the
Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s was to control countries by
manipulating the election process. �CIA apologists leap up and say, �Well, most of these things are not
so bloody.� And that�s true. You�re giving politicians some money
so he�ll throw his party in this
direction or that one, or make false speeches on your behalf, or something like
that. It may be non-violent, but it�s still illegal intervention in other country�s affairs, raising the question of
whether or not we�re going to have a world in which
laws, rules of behavior are respected,� Stockwell wrote. Documents illustrate that the Reagan and
Bush administration supported computer manipulation in both Noriega�s rise to power in Panama and in
Marcos� attempt to retain power in the
Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration�s staunchest supporters were members of the Council on
National Policy.
The perfect solution
Ohio Senator Fedor continues
to fight valiantly for Senate Bill 167 and the Holy Grail of the �voter verified paper audit trail.� Proponents of a paper trail were
emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International,
demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor�s fair in Columbus that provides two separate voting
receipts.
The first paper receipt
displays the voter�s touch screen selection under
plexiglass that falls into a lockbox after the voter approves. Also, the
TruVote system provides the voter with a receipt that includes a unique voter
ID and pin number which can be used to call in to a voter audit internet
connection to make sure the vote cast was actually counted.
Brooks Thomas, Coordinator
of Elections in Tennessee, stated, �I�ve not seen anything that compares
to the Gibbs� TruVote validation system. . . .� The Assistant Secretary of State
of Georgia, Terrel L. Slayton, Jr., claimed Gibbs had come up with the �perfect solution.�
Still, there remains
opposition from Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell. His spokesperson Carlo
LoParo recently pointed out that federal mandates under HAVA do not require a
paper trail: �. . . if Congress changes the
federal law to require it [a paper trail], we�ll certainly make that a requirement of our efforts.� LoParo went on to accuse
advocates of a paper trail of attempting to �derail�
voting reform.
U.S. Representative Rush
Holt introduced HR 2239, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act
of 2003, that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail
so that voters may verify that their screen touches match their actual vote.
Election officials would also have a paper trail for recounts.
As Blackwell pressures the
Ohio legislature to adopt electronic voting machines without a paper trail, Athan
Gibbs wonders, �Why would you buy a voting machine
from a company like Diebold which provides a paper trail for every single
machine it makes except its voting machines? And then, when you ask it to
verify its numbers, it hides behind �trade secrets.��
Maybe the Diebold decision
makes sense, if you believe, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, that democracy is
too important to leave up to the votes of the people.
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