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Voting in the USA: A Tale of Two Brothers

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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:43 AM
Original message
Voting in the USA: A Tale of Two Brothers
Once upon a time there were two brothers: Bob and Todd Urosevich. In the 1980's, with the financial backing of the right-wing extremist Christian billionaire Howard Ahmanson, Bob and Todd founded a company called American Information Systems (AIS) that built voting machines. They were also certified to count votes. It is interesting to note that back then there was no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. Even more interesting is the fact that this is still true today. Not even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has a complete list of all the companies that count votes in U.S. elections.


Voting Fraud in the USA
Did you know....

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

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

The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

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."

35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based o­n votes counted by ES&S machines.

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.

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

Diebold is based in Ohio and supplies almost all the voting machines there.

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

30% of all U.S. votes are carried out o­n unverifiable touch screen voting machines.

Bush's Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as its goal to replace all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel owns 35% of ES&S and was caught lying about it

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

Exit polls for the 2004 elections were accurate within 1% or less in areas where ballot machines were used.

Major exit poll data discrepancies were noted in counties where touch screen machines were used, especially in Ohio and Florida.


Need details?

http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3667&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
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Omnibus Donating Member (676 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:52 AM
Response to Original message
1. I like this.
A succinct list of easily verifiable facts that lead one unerringly to conclude fraud is not only possible, but likely.

If Reader's Digest weren't a right-wing handjob sploogerag, they would print this.
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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:06 AM
Response to Original message
2. Keep this kicked dudes
With this on the front page, the left wing "gate keepers" who want us to play nice with the Neo-Cons will know where we're coming from.

Religiously insane vote riggers were given the keys to do their part in ushering in the rapture sooner than later...

Feel better?
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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:31 AM
Response to Original message
3. nominate this post for the homepage
I think this kind of intense focus on the voting machine manufacturers and their Republican ties is the way to pursue this.

Let's leave Bush himself out of it - focus on the voting machines and their owners who are seriously in conflict of almost every ethic known to mankind.

Concentrate on the Rovian fingerprints behind the scenes...
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kokomo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:42 AM
Response to Original message
4. We knew about paperless voting for several years. Why didn't we stop it?
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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:45 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. Nobody took us seriously, it was a "conspiracy theory"...
Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 03:46 AM by RBHam
Which is, as Gore Vidal said, now shorthand in America for "unspeakable truth."
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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 05:13 AM
Response to Original message
6. must
kick
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Pallas180 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 09:51 AM
Response to Original message
7. Holy Carp. Brothers? Committed to electing dummy? No oversite??
Voting Fraud in the USA
Did you know....

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

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

The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

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."

35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based o­n votes counted by ES&S machines.
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 09:58 AM
Response to Original message
8. Theonomic Reconstructionism:One God, One Vote:
Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 09:59 AM by seemslikeadream



Theonomic Reconstructionism:
One God, One Vote:

"We protect the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Now, we protect the most sacred treasure we have, our secret ballot." -Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, May 2002.

"My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives." -Howard Ahmanson

How does a fervent belief in the End of the World and a conviction that the Bible (King James only, thank you ma'am) is the actual revealed word of God factor into one's long-term investment strategies? A strange question to be sure, but one that must have been posed by at least a few of the eclectic crowd who believe in Theonomic Reconstructionism.

Theonomic Reconstructionism is a belief that the only true authority is God's, that allegiance to biblical laws trumps that of civic law and that the Kingdom of Heaven needs to be built on Earth before Jesus will come again. In addition to that, homosexuals should be put to death, women should be banned from civic office, apostates and heretics should be stoned to death and there is a great need for more Christian politicians.

Not content to philosophize about such things, the TR movement sprang into action. Funded by billionaires such as Howard Ahmanson and the Coors and Hunt families, Reconstructionists formed think tanks such as the Chalcedon Institute and the Rutherford Institute (the friendly guys that funded Paula Jones' lawsuit against Clinton) to give the Christian Right a philosophical base to draw from, and political action committees to finance their elections.


According to the Reconstructionists, Jesus would do what Howard Ahmanson did. Ahmanson inherited his money from his father, owner of Home Savings & Loan (during the S&L scandal of the Reagan years, Home's investors, mostly small family investments, lost over $150 million dollars. No one went to jail). In addition to funding PACs and think tanks, Howard Jr. parlayed his fortune into the majority stock of a business called American Information Systems (AIS) started by two enterprising brothers, Todd and Bob Urosevich. AIS later merged with Business Records Corporation (BRC) and became Election Systems & Solutions (ES&S). ES&S is the number one provider of touch-screen voting machines. Their website claims that their products were used in collecting 56% of the national vote in the last presidential elections
more
http://www.tabletnewspaper.com/politics/73_tftgk.html
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shuffnew Donating Member (306 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:38 PM
Response to Reply #8
11. Howard Ahmanson Jr "On a Mission From God"!
Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 01:14 PM by shuffnew
The below article decribes a lot about Howard Ahmanson (which I found on a South Carolina Espicopal Forum): (I have also read that Ahmanson was previously a jew turned marxist, but don't know if that is true - one thing for certain is that it seems he is a very wealthy contributor to the far right-wing cult --- neo-pagen movement)

Avenging Angel of the Religious Right
(excerpt)
Quirky millionaire Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on a mission from God to stop gay marriage, fight evolution, defeat “liberal” churches—and reelect George W. Bush.

By Max Blumenthal
Jan. 6, 2004


(full text)
http://www.episcopalforumofsc.org/readingsbody.html?file=readings/VBL/VBL-AvengingAngel.txt

"Another interesting clip from this article: "His youth was plagued with loneliness and loss. At age 10, his mother served his father with divorce papers. A few years later, she died. Then, when Howard was 18, his father died too, sinking him into spiraling depths of despair and therapy. To escape his background, Ahmanson drifted to the far-off plains of Kansas and enrolled part-time in college classes. “It was like taking the lid off a pressure cooker,” Mrs. Ahmanson recalls of her husband’s self-imposed exile."

I think many times those that it is the lonely (like Ahmanson) and poor (like the Jone's followers) are the ones that tend to move to the extreme right (neo-pagens) trying to find themselves or a niche in life and then professing God has told them to do it?!?!

Dunno? But when I read things like these post on the subject this, it reminds me of Bush (taking direction from God in such an arrogant manner that even his own advisors have difficulty in communicating) as we've read much about too recently:

1) "Without A Doubt"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101704A.shtml

2) When God becomes a campaign ploy (Oct. 27, 2004)...
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=740

3) Clueless people love Bush (Oct. 26, 2004)...
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17962

4)The White House was not always God's House (Oct. 26, 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schlesinger26oct26,0,3577286.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

5) ONE NATION UNDER BUSH (At a campaign rally, Republicans raising their arms and reciting the "Bush Pledge" )
By Chris Suellentrop
Oct. 28, 2004, at 10:44 PM PT
http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2108852&MSID=6FA372FC56C0424B954243D3499C295E


And this is how our freedom to even vote and be counted dissapates!
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petrock2004 Donating Member (182 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 11:04 AM
Response to Original message
9. wow
:wow:

thank you for putting it so concisely

...anyone else had trouble sleeping lately? :cry:
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shuffnew Donating Member (306 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 11:47 AM
Response to Original message
10. US vote-rigging: from democracy to dictatorship?
US vote-rigging: from democracy to dictatorship

Alf Mendes, 28.02.2004 16:09

(Excerpt summary)
US government and military 'spokespeople' are constantly blowing the democratic trumpet to justify illegal wars around the world... but under closer examination a variety of methods have been used since world war two to undermine the very process of democracy in the US. The result is one of the most corrupt, least democratic nations in the world. The biggest scam so far - electronic voting - is about to be put to the test. Will the public buy the lie? If the public do they can kiss goodbye to freedom in the west and watch totalitarianism take over.

(read full article below)

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/02/286128.html

Further corraborates your post, no doubt!
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SomthingsGotaGive Donating Member (485 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:23 PM
Response to Reply #10
12. kick
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Wind Dancer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:49 PM
Response to Original message
13. Wow!
Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 02:53 PM by FrustratedDemInNC
This is scary, what do we do about it?
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seafan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 02:58 PM
Response to Original message
14. LOL ! I thought this was gonna be about * and Jeb. n/t
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VTHoosierPatriot Donating Member (95 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 05:01 PM
Response to Original message
15. This is so sickening
We have to keep blasting all of the news outlets with this and troll the freepers with it to at least undermind their "electric mandate."
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