Manufacturing History in Florida?
Here’s something to ponder.
According to Florida’s Liberty County election site, we find that of the 4075 registered voters as of “bookclosing” on 10/4/04, there were:
3597 Democrats and
320 Republicans, with 158 others.
But the Presidential election results show that
1070 voted for Kerry,
1927 voted for Bush and 24 votes went to others.
That is even MORE odd in light of the fact that just a few short months ago, in the primary election, the proportion of Democrats to Republicans was much closer to the number of registered voters than the number who voted for Bush.
On 8/31/04,
1658 people cast a ballot for Betty Castor (D) and 774 voted for another Democrat.
157 votes were cast for all the Republican Senate candidates combined.
Would it surprise you to learn that the system used to count the votes was ES&S?
Election Systems & Services (formerly Data Mark Systems and American Information Systems) was founded by Todd and Bob Urosevich. Today, Todd is Vice President of Customer Support for ES&S. Bob, however, is now the President of Diebold. So we have the appearance, but not necessarily the reality, of competition among the vendors. ES&S’s history bears a heavy Republican presence.
ES&S has a bit of a sordid history. Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel was both an investor of and a beneficiary of this company, as ES&S was used when he won his surprise election to the Senate in 1996. He claimed to have ended his involvement with ES&S in 1995, but in reality held shares in the McCarthy Group, which owned the company that became ES&S. In addition, Hagel’s campaign treasurer, Michael McCarthy, was the McCarthy in the “McCarthy Group”. These sorts of conflicts of interests should not be allowed so close to our vote.
ES&S is into the scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours game that lobbyists in Washington know all to well. Do business with us today and we’ll give you a job tomorrow. ES&S has done exactly that - hiring former secretaries of state from Florida and California after those same people held positions that required them to recommend an electronic voting vendor.
According to Florida’s Liberty County election site, we find that of the 4075 registered voters as of “bookclosing” on 10/4/04, there were:
3597 Democrats and
320 Republicans, with 158 others.
But the Presidential election results show that
1070 voted for Kerry,
1927 voted for Bush and 24 votes went to others.
That is even MORE odd in light of the fact that just a few short months ago, in the primary election, the proportion of Democrats to Republicans was much closer to the number of registered voters than the number who voted for Bush.
On 8/31/04,
1658 people cast a ballot for Betty Castor (D) and 774 voted for another Democrat.
157 votes were cast for all the Republican Senate candidates combined.
Would it surprise you to learn that the system used to count the votes was ES&S?
Election Systems & Services (formerly Data Mark Systems and American Information Systems) was founded by Todd and Bob Urosevich. Today, Todd is Vice President of Customer Support for ES&S. Bob, however, is now the President of Diebold. So we have the appearance, but not necessarily the reality, of competition among the vendors. ES&S’s history bears a heavy Republican presence.
ES&S has a bit of a sordid history. Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel was both an investor of and a beneficiary of this company, as ES&S was used when he won his surprise election to the Senate in 1996. He claimed to have ended his involvement with ES&S in 1995, but in reality held shares in the McCarthy Group, which owned the company that became ES&S. In addition, Hagel’s campaign treasurer, Michael McCarthy, was the McCarthy in the “McCarthy Group”. These sorts of conflicts of interests should not be allowed so close to our vote.
ES&S is into the scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours game that lobbyists in Washington know all to well. Do business with us today and we’ll give you a job tomorrow. ES&S has done exactly that - hiring former secretaries of state from Florida and California after those same people held positions that required them to recommend an electronic voting vendor.
posted by Real History Lisa at 9:13 PM - Permanent Link -
1 Comments:
I want to share this little story, which I wrote when Gary Webb was under fire from all directions for his CIA-Contra-Cocaine story. I sent this to Gary when I wrote it and he enjoyed it very much.
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