Thom Hartmann: Have Voting Machines Already Made their Choice for Prez?

[thomhartmann]

So, your Nobel Peace Prize-winning European Union is demanding that indebted nations like Greece and Portugal privatize all their water resources if they want to continue receiving bail outs. As in - you want to stay in the Eurozone? Then hand over your most precious commons to transnational corporations. This is in line with the broader privatization agenda we're seeing all around the world - especially here in America as water, roads, school, prisons - you name it - are all being privatized and taken out of the hands of "we the people." These are all assaults on democracy.

But one thing that Europe hasn't done - the one thing that Europe has crossed off and said, "no way are we privatizing that," is the vote. But here in the United States - from coast to coast - we've privatized the vote. And in doing so - we've removed the linchpin holding together or democracy. Several European nations - including Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands have experimented with and then ditched electronic voting machines. In fact - Germany's Supreme Court ruled that e-voting machines were unconstitutional, and Ireland sold theirs for pennies on the dollar as scrap metal.

But here in the United States we continue to proliferate more and more e-voting machines owned by corporations that have vested political interests. That's despite the fact that it's pretty well documented that such machines may have flipped political races in favor of Republicans. Take for example what happened in Nebraska in 1996. Republican Chuck Hagel was running an e-voting machine company - and secured a huge contract to sell his machines to Nebraska. He then decided to run for Senate in Nebraska against Ben Nelson - and guess what - despite being a long-shot candidate - Hagel won. Or at least that's what his own voting machines calculated.

The Washington Post said THIS following the surprising victory: "[Hagel's] Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." And as Bev Harris - who wrote the book on Black Box Voting - pointed out - Hagel inexplicably won nearly every voter demographic - and won in largely African American communities that had never voted Republican. He was the first Republican Senator elected in Nebraska in 24 years - and he was elected in part on his own voting machines.

Something similar happened in Georgia in 2002. According to polls heading into election day - Democratic Senator Max Cleland had a 5-point lead over his Republican challenger - Saxby Chambliss. But after the votes were counted on the machines - Chambliss ended up winning by 7 points. Not a single poll heading into the election showed Chambliss with a lead - let alone a 7-point lead. Yet - that's what the corporate voting machines said happened - and Chambliss went on to serve in the Senate. Despite all this weird stuff with e-voting machines - in 2002 George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act - which set aside $3.9 billion for polling stations to replace traditional voting methods with e-voting machines.

And since then - the use of e-voting in our elections has exploded. Ahead of the 2004 election - the CEO of Deibold - a major e-voting machine company - promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush. Of course - Bush narrowly won Ohio amid numerous well-documented accounts of election fraud in the state - including ballot-box stuffing, voter caging, and...you guessed...e-voting machine manipulation. In 2007 - three years after the election - Ohio's Secretary of State concluded in an official study that the state's e-voting machines had "critical security failures" that could, "impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State." In other words - the Ohio election could have easily have been stolen - or "delivered" to Bush - just as Diebold's CEO promised.

That's what happens when you privatize voting and hand it over to private, for-profit corporations. And now - history could repeat itself. Heading into this year's election - a quarter of all the votes cast will be on e-voting machines that don't have paper trails - and have been shown over and over again to be easily hacked. And some of these machines just so happen to be owned by people affiliated with Mitt Romney. As the Free Press reported: "Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers, are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election."

In Texas, Washington, Colorado, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Ohio - e-voting machines will be used that are owned by a company called Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic is partly owned by a capital investment firm known as H.I.G. Capital. Eleven investors at H.I.G. Capital used to work at Mitt Romney's Bain Capital - and two of them are currently bundlers for the Romney campaign. In other words - the private operators of these e-voting machines have already picked the guy then want to win. This is not how our democracy should work. This is what happens when you privatize the vote.

We've devoted many segments on this show to this creeping privatization agenda - the efforts to inject the profit-motive into our commons. From water facilites in Detroit - to schools in Chicago - to public parks in Benton Harbor, Michigan - "we the people's" democratic control of our commons is being taken away by transnational corporations. These are all sins against democracy. But privatizing the vote itself is a mortal sin against democracy. And this sin might be what hands this year's election to the oligarchs once again - just they've been doing since 2000.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[iandhr]

1. The Onion covered this is 2008

[MindMover]

2. This is one of the major reasons I have absentee voted for every election

in the last 20 years ... I physically fill in the block next to the name on a big ballot and either mail that in or take it in to the county elections office ...

E-voting is/has the potential to be corrupted ... and way to easily ....

[LiberalLovinLug]

3. I think if Obama loses it will be because of voter machine fraud

If poll numbers remain somewhat constant.

And I also think that Democrats have to look into the mirror if that happens. For the life of me I cannot understand why this has not been a burning issue especially after the 2000 debacle. And then after it was proved that vote were switched. I understand the Republicans wanting to not only keep but expand such an easily corrupted system, especially when their friends own the companies. But why leading Democrats seemingly laugh it off as some kind of nutty conspiracy theory is baffling.

[bonniebgood]

4. Sad thing is this "topic" dosent't get any exposure until

election time. Most people are not informed. Just wait and see by weeks end, romney will be trailing 1 point in Ohio. Women will be flocking to romney in droves.

[HopeHoops]

5. K&R - I'm a computer geek. I know the things can be hacked.