20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

While the job search and its attendant self-esteem crisis have been occupying most of my mental real estate lately, it must be said that I'm not really over the 2004 election.  I've been thinking about it again as I prepapre to head home to my natal red state for a week.  Part of the dream of working for myself involves being able to take a day or an afternoon per week and volunteer for some nice lefty organization that's devoted to preventing another dirty election with such a terrible outcome.  I do think that there was enough fraud sprinkled across these 50 states last November 2nd to turn the tide toward Bush.  Part of me has to believe that for my own sanity, maybe, but I stand by it.  It's really frightening to consider how shady our elections system is, and how little hew and cry there is to change it.

This is just the kind of thing I'm talking about: (via Angry Girl)

Hew!  Cry!  (as in "cry out", not as in the days of random sobbing some of us experienced after the election.)

Did you know....

1.  80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies:  Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2.  There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3.  The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. (WTF?-Cara)

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4.  The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5.  Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.  He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6.  Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7.  Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm

http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8.  ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9.  Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes.  In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10.  Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11.  Diebold is based in Ohio.

http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12.  Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13.  Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14.  Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15.  None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16.  California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad.  Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!  (See the movie here <http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov>.)

http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17.  30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18.  All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19.  The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother. (maybe not news, but seriously, what are the odds?--Cara)

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20.  Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/

@

Comments

[Theresa]

please, please do us all a favor and find a way to get paid to do this. the extent of your research to present this to us for free, is, well, amazing.

[Cara]

Oh, you can feel free to pay me, but I got this from another site. Maybe I should make that bit more prominent...

[Robert]

Stop it. You're scaring me. Any more of that scary talk and I may not want to come back to America from my holiday in a sunny paradise...

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