The only one way to get Corporate America out of power by voting them out. Doing homework on the candidates and voting your choice may no longer be enough. The Republican Party under Karl Rove is preparing a laundry list of tricks that would make Boss Tweet and Huey Long blush. We must be vigilant of the process itself and try to get “one man – one vote” to actually mean just that.
Steven Hill, in his new book “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy” lists four categories of ideas designed to achieve fair elections. I copied one sentence from each. The entire article is here http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/12/recipe_for_a_fair_election.php
1. Nonpartisan election officials - At the top of the list must be creating a bureaucracy of impartial, nonpartisan election officials.
2. Professionalization and training of election officials - In addition to non-partisanship, election administration should be upgraded to that of a professional civil service position as a way of ensuring competence, training and impartiality.
3. National elections commission and national standards - The United States leaves the administration of elections to local officials in more than 3,000 counties and 9,000 townships with few national standards to guide them. This creates different standards and practices for procedures like recounts and use of absentee and provisional ballots, as well as wide discrepancies in the quality of voting equipment.
4. Develop “public interest” voting equipment - At the very least, advocates of fair elections should demand a voter-verified paper trail so that any recounts will have a chance of uncovering errors or fraud. We have such an audit trail for ATM transactions; are our votes less important?
Insure your elected representatives are voting for the extension of the “Voting Rights Act”. It is the “Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006”. It will be voted on this week in the House (HR9) this week. The sponsors of the bill are afraid Bushco may introduce some crippling amendments.
Joel Bleifuss and Steven F. Freeman have written an important new book on the subject. This book was the basis for the recent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. article in Rolling Stone magazine. The title is much to the point “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count.” An excerpt from this book is in the article.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906K.shtml
A 2004 dirty trick was accidentally uncovered by another strong advocate of giving back America to the Americans. The story is about how the Republican National Committee managed to challenge the absentee ballots of black soldiers. His name is Greg Palast and his story is here http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo-soldiers
There are three journalists who are working real hard to bring out the story. Search for there names along with voting and you will have a wealth of information on the depths to which Republicans will stoop for their corporate masters.
Catherine Komp voting
Paul Krugman voting
Greg Palast voting
Two companies heavily involved with voting and fully involved with Bush are Diebold and Choicepoint.
The CEO of Diebold once said in a speech that his mission was to get George Bush enough electoral votes to win. He later said he didn’t mean it “that way”. Diebold has come out with a new voting machine which makes tampering easier.
Choicepoint is a data miner. It was chosen by the Florida AG and Jeb Bush to validate voter registration in that state. It deleted approx 100,000 voters from the list with no reason except they would vote democratic. These people have yet to be reinstated. Choicepoint was recently involved in this scandal.
“Sullivan is one of 145,000 people whose digital data records were exposed to criminals in the largest known security breach of a data broker. But Sullivan's problems with Choicepoint, a spinoff from credit-reporting agency Equifax, may be just a glimpse of the headaches he and millions of others face. ChoicePoint stores an estimated 19 billion public records and functions as a sort of intelligence service for business and government clients”.
It now appears the phone companies did not lie when denying giving phone records to the government. They gave them to Choicepoint who will then enhance them for domestic spying use.
These are your voting machine companies. If now have a paper ballot, keep it.
ES&S:
Chuck Hagel first ran for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska in 1996. Electronic voting machines owned by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) reported that he had won both the primaries and the general election in unprecedented victories. His 1996 victory was considered one of the biggest upsets of that election. He was the first Republican to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign in 24 years and won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican.
Six years later Hagel ran again against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. He was re-elected to his second term with 83% of the vote: the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska. Again, the votes were counted by ES&S, now the largest voting machine company in America.
While these victories could be dismissed simply as a Republican upset, a January 2003 article in the independent Washington paper The Hill revealed interesting details about Hagel's business investments and casts a different light on his election successes. Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S (then AIS) until 1995 and he is still a major stockholder of the parent company of ES&S, McCarthy & Company.
In Florida, ground zero for election problems, ES&S retained the services of a former secretary of state and one-time running mate of Governor Jeb Bush. In 2001, Global Election Systems (Diebold's predecessor) hired the former chair of Florida's Republican Party, the former running mate of a previous governor, and a former environmental advisor to Jeb Bush, according to the Miami Herald. The lobbyist trying to win the $24.5 million Miami-Dade contract for ES&S was a top GOP lawyer who worked against the recount in 2000. The Votomatic punch-card machines at the center of the 2000 Florida election debacle were, ironically enough, also manufactured by ES&S.
Diebold:
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.”
Populex:
In Illinois, Populex is the company that is creating the electronic voting system for the state. It was recently revealed that Ronald Reagan's former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci now serves on the company's five-member Advisory Board. Carlucci is also the chairman emeritus of The Carlyle Group, the defense contractor often called the "Ex-President's Club" because of the high profile partners and advisors on its payroll.
Sequoia
In 1999, two Sequoia (Voting Systems) executives, Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci, were indicted for paying
Louisiana Commissioner of Elections Jerry Fowler an $8 million bribe to buy their voting machines. Fowler, is
currently serving five years in prison.
Be vigilant, be suspicious of all machines, tampered voting lists, clogged phone lines to voter transportation, anyone in the polling place except voters, election workers and cops
