(This is a fascinating history of the forces behind election fraud that range from Depression-era corrupt businessmen to Cold Warriors to theocratic billionares. They've spent 70 years preventing democracy in the USA for the profits of conquest and the glory of...themselves.
I don't think this is being handed out in orientation packets for 19 year-old army recruits on their way to Iraq for an 'up-armored'...Fallujan Freedom Frenzy. But it damn sure ought to be in high schools and colleges. Give the gift of education to the young folks in your life this holiday season.
Sources are down at the bottom, pun intended.-JOM)
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Vote Rigging: how organised criminals have stolen U.S. democracy
Saturday, February 28, 2004 - 06:18 PM
Hi-Tech computer voting is now the order-of-the-day in America. In
October 2002, the US Administration passed the Help America Vote Act
(HAVA) which authorised the funding of $4 billion for states to use the
Direct Recording Election system (DRE) equipment which would have to
meet certain standards (set by the Act ) by the year 2006, at which
point, they (the states) will be under obligation to have purchased
said new equipment. As of December 2003, 36 states have agreed to these
obligations. <1> Note that in DRE, votes are stored electronically,
and, as such , therefore under proprietary ownership of the equipment
companies: the voter is therefore denied access!
As always, the above needs to be seen within an historical context if
it is to be properly assessed, and the following facts, at first
glance, may seem to be of little pertinence to the opening paragraph -
but, hopefully, this will be clarified by the further facts that follow.
In 1933, in answer to the economic Depression that prevailed then, FDR
set up the Business Advisory Council (BAC) - a cabal of prestigious
corporate capitalists who would subsequently become a crucial adjunct
to the US Department of Commerce. This depression lasted throughout the
‘30’s into the very early ‘40’s as evidenced by queues of jobless,
among whom it soon became common knowledge that there was no need to
apply at certain companies if you were either a Jew or Irish.
In 1961, JFK was elected president by a very small majority and
appointed Republicans to all his cabinet posts -but that of Secretary
of State. Not long after, as noted by G. William Domhoff in his book
‘The Powers That Be’: the BAC had “...made a unilateral withdrawal from
its quasi governmental status in 1962”, and dropping the term
‘Advisory’ from its title, it would from now on be known as ‘The
Business Council’ (BC). The reason for this break in relations was that
JFK’s Secretary of Commerce, Luther H. Hodges, had demanded a more
open-style Council, the chairman of which, Ralph Cordinger (of General
Electric), had become involved in a gigantic price-fixing scandal in
the electrical equipment industry. As a result, the Council declared it
would become an ‘independent organisation’ which would offer its advice
to all agencies of government. Domhoff added “Despite the fact that the
Business Council was no longer an official advisory group to the
Department of Commerce, it continued the prominent role it had
developed during the Eisenhower administration, supplying
businesspeople for government positions and meeting regularly in Hot
Springs with government officials. It was especially close to the
Johnson administration.”<2> The BC was not pleased with JFK.
(The following events of JFK’s presidency will, of necessity, heavily
rely on Mark Lane’s book, ‘Plausible Denial’ - inasmuch as it is the
most comprehensive published coverage of the assassination - to say
nothing of the attendant cover-ups. After all, Lane was personally
involved in much of the legal activity in this affair, and had much
access to documents)
But before going further, it is important to note that JFK had
inherited another brewing problem: namely, the Cuban revolution of 1959
had led to the expulsion from that island of the American Mafia, who
were soon co-opted by the CIA in the latter’s secretive plans to
‘remove’ Castro. A dangerous precedent was hereby set in motion.
In April 1961, the CIA-led ‘Bay of Pigs’ operation against Cuba failed,
and, as Col. L. Fletcher Prouty confirms to Mark Lane, JFK decided to
dismantle the CIA by initially firing top officers Allen Dulles
(Director), Cabell (deputy Director - whose brother was Mayor of
Dallas), and Bissell (Director for Plans). Prouty added that “..The
task of breaking up the CIA was scheduled for 1964, after the foreseen
Kennedy re-election”. (NB: From ‘55 to ‘63, Prouty had held the
following key positions: chief of special operations in (a) the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; (b) the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and (c)
The US Air Force.) <3>
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK set up the Cuban study
group to determine the future of the CIA (Dulles was part of that
group!). This resulted in the three National Security Action Memoranda
(NSAM) 55, 56, & 57 aimed at drastically curbing any future CIA
activities. This turned out to be a somewhat futile gesture on
Kennedy’s part - the illegal activities of the CIA continued. <4>
Soon after being elected, and on the advice of his administration
(mainly Republicans, as noted above), he had authorised a 12-fold
increase in US troops to be sent to Vietnam - to the satisfaction of
the Military-Industrial complex. It did not take him long to realise
his mistake. In 1963, now determined to withdraw the 16,000 American
troops from Vietnam, JFK sent Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Sec. of Defense
Robert McNamara to Vietnam to ‘prepare’ a report known as the Trip
Report (already drawn up by Maj. Gen. Victor Krulak & Col. Prouty)
recommending such withdrawal. (Understandable, when it is recalled
that, as Senator, he (JFK) had visited Vietnam in 1951 and written the
following complaint in his book “Strategy of Peace” (p.89): “In
Indo-China we have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French
régime to hang on to the remnants of empire.There is no broad general
support of the native Vietnam government among the people of that
area.”)
Now, this Trip report was duly signed and delivered to the president.
Result? The very crucial NSAM 263 of 2nd October 1963 which called for
the immediate removal of 1000 ‘military advisers’ and a timetable for
the withdrawal of all remaining troops. According to Col. Prouty: “The
Pentagon was outraged. JFK was a curseword in the corridors”. On the
10th of November 1963, Prouty was posted to the South Pole by Maj. Gen.
Edward G. Lansdale, CIA liaison to McNamara. He was therefore not in
Dallas when JFK was assassinated on November the 22nd. <5>
The dissimulative manner in which the investigation of the
assassination was conducted by the police, the FBI, the Warren
Commission, and the conniving media - all accompanied by numerous
contradictory statements - naturally aroused suspicion in the eyes of
many, including witnesses to the assassination. Now, suspicion, in the
absence of rational facts, prompts assumptions, one of which is a very
common-sensical one: namely, in view of the facts above, it was now
self-evident that JFK’s relationship with the CIA and the
Military-Industrial Complex (as was Eisenhower’s wont to call it) was
of such an inimical nature that he was now regarded as a threat to the
latter’s strategy of global domination - and would therefore have to be
killed sooner rather than later - preferably before the coming
election. Indeed, in 1979, the House Select committee on Assassinations
concluded that JFK was assassinated ‘as a result of a conspiracy’. As
for the consequences of such an act - the Establishment’s
economic/political clout was such that they were confident of their
ability to cope with them. They wasted no time - with not a little help
from the new president, LBJ, who had had little love for JFK. Now, it
was becoming increasingly necessary to cover the whole matter with a
veil of secrecy, with much assistance from the corporate-owned media -
but more crucially, subsequent elections would have to be better
‘controlled’ in order to ensure that the JFK débacle would not be
repeated. The new hi-tech computerised machines would later prove
essential to this aim.
Secrecy was of paramount importance to this project, and the first step
taken to ensure this was the unpublicised setting up, in August 1964,
of the News Election Service (NES), a consortium of the three major
television networks: ABC, NBC and CBS (CNN was to join later), plus the
Associated Press wire service, the New York Times, the Washington Post
and other news-gathering organizations, their job being to compile
computer-voting results at election time and feed them to the major
media. That this veil of secrecy was later lifted (but only to a
certain extent), was due to the investigatory work of two brothers, Jim
and Ken Collier - entrepreneurs - who wrote a book ‘Votescam:The
Stealing of America’ which exposed in comprehensive detail how votes at
elections were being manipulated from now on. But it must be hastily
added that the major book chains banned publication of the book (though
it is now available on the internet. <6>). The Colliers knew what they
were writing about: Ken had run for Congress in Florida in 1970.
It goes without saying that, in order to gain a clearer understanding
of any subject matter, it is helpful to view it from an historical
perspective - and so it is with the matter of voting methodology. It
should come as no surprise to learn that the paper-balloting system was
first adopted by Australia in 1856: after all, this was in effect a
symbolic gesture on the part of the many British/Irish who had
previously been expelled from their homelands to a strange land
thousands of miles away, there to serve their prison sentences on
criminal charges! These (now) Aussies were merely giving Britain a
2-finger salute: “Up yours, you Pommies!”. The Pommies got-the-message
and subsequently adopted this method of voting - which they still
follow to this day. (In America, as of 1996, only 1.7% of registered
voters used this system!).
The subsequent evolution in voting methods, from the mechanical lever
machine of 1892; through the punchcard, as used in the 1964
‘primaries’; to the marksense optical scan; to the latest Direct
Recording Electronic (DRE) system (see opening para. above) - all
reveal one significant, indisputable fact: namely, voting methodology
has become not only increasingly complex , but, more importantly, more
vulnerable to being manipulated illegally. This is not to say that the
simple paper ballot cannot be rigged (after all, a vote can be ‘bought’
in more than one way) - but it is verifiable - whereas the subsequent
methods (particularly the more recent ones such as the DRE) are not
verifiable, because of the legally-held proprietary rights of the
machine owners. In simple terms - the voter has no access to the
vote-count!
One of the earlier punch-card voting devices used was the
Harris-designed IBM Votomatic. “The punch card machine was first used
officially in 1965 in Fulton and DeKalb Counties, Georgia. .. problems
often occur with the ballot when it is put through the reading machine.
Although punch card machines are extremely fallible”, they were widely
used <7> “After several years, IBM realized that the Votomatic voting
machine... was actually a Pandora's box...and IBM eventually sold its
rights in the company after IBM's president, Thomas Watson, read an
article that implied he might be trying to install IBM voting machines
in enough precincts to win him the first electronically rigged election
for President of the United States”.... “With voting machines attached
to telephone lines it was possible to meddle with the actual vote from
a telephone miles away. Getting caught was not possible. ‘Deniability’
and ‘untrackability’ were built into the secret source codes that
animated the machines.”.... “Most Americans did not realize that such
an anti-democratic virus had infected their vote. Most do not realize
it today.” <8>
Spurred by reports and rumours of earlier cases of vote-rigging in Dade
county (when, in a referendum held in1959, the 27 municipalities had
lost their autonomous powers to an outside, elitist group, the Metro)
the Collier brothers decided that one of them, Ken, would run for
Congress against the sitting Democrat congressman, Claude Pepper, in
the 1970 election in Dade County, Florida. Pepper won in what the
brothers soon realised had been a manipulated, rigged vote involving
county officers, police, FBI, and judiciary! They were shocked, but
determined - and their subsequent years of detailed, thorough
investigation only confirmed their earlier fears. Vote-rigging was
alive and well in America - to say nothing of corruption in the higher
reaches of the Justice System in Washington!
One episode covering the Collier’s investigation in the aftermath of
the 1970 election is pertinently fascinating: again, they had learned
from earlier rumours/reports (see above) that the 1,648 mechanical
lever vote machines used in their election were probably stored at the
Opa-Locka airport hangar (Jim had learned to fly there)., and the
brothers were determined to see them - and learn from them. They
obtained a court order and went to said hangar - to find the machines
there. Producing their court order, and indicating one of the machines
stored there, Ken asked the man in charge “How can you rig this
thing?”. The man, assuming that their presence had been authorised,
explained that there were 2 simple ways: either by putting decals over
the counter, or by predeterming the counter reading “by shaving the
plastic wheel inside so that it slips ahead 100 or 200 or 300 votes.
Any good mechanic can do it with a razor blade.” And he gave them a
shaved ‘predetermining’ counter to keep. <9> They now had another item
of evidence in hand - and there were many more to come! (These
machines, made by Automatic Voting Machine Co. of New York were
evidently not as efficient as the later more complex computer machines
that were to follow).
As unearthed by the Collier bros. from the Library of Congress: in
1980, a study was commissioned by the CIA-linked Air Command and Staff
College in cooperation with the University of New Mexico to examine the
US electoral system. This important, candid study was subsequently
distributed to selected government agencies. Following are brief quotes
from same (NB: underlining is this author’s): "The United States
government has no elections office and does not attempt to administer
congressional elections.”...“The responsibility for the administration
of elections and certification of winners in the United States national
election rests with a consortium of private entities, including 111,000
members of the national League of Women Voters.”...“In the case of
counting actual ballots on national election night, public officials
have abdicated responsibility of aggregation of election night vote
totals to a private organization, News Election Service of New York
(NES)”..“ This private organization performs without a contract:
without supervision by public officials. It makes decisions concerning
its duties according to its own criteria.”...“The question and
accountability of News Election Service has not arisen in the nation's
press because the responsibility NES now has in counting the nation's
votes was assumed gradually over a lengthy period without ever being
evaluated as an item on the public agenda.” <10>
In 1990, due to a merger, NES became Voter Research & Surveys (VRS),
which, in turn, in 1993, became Voter News Service (VNS), which,
because of its exposed vote-rigging activities, was disbanded in early
2003 - to be replaced by the National Election Pool (NEP), a consortium
of ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, “to provide tabulated vote counts
and exit poll surveys for the 2004 major presidential primaries and the
November general election. These six major news organizations, in a
joint decision, have appointed Edison Media Research and Mitofsky
International as the sole provider of exit polls for the most important
political races of 2004. The AP (group) will tally the vote”. <11>..A
case of many differing titles - but basically all the same consortium!
- perhaps best exemplified by the facts that the president of Mitovsky
International, Warren Mitofsky had been (a) executive director of the
CBS News election and survey unit from 1967 to 1990; (b) started and
directed Voter Research & Surveys from 1990 to 1993,”; and (c) had
started the CBS News/New York Times Poll in 1975 and directed it for
CBS for its first 15 years.” (He had even “conducted the only exit
polls for the Russian presidential elections in 1996 and 2000”; polled
for the 1993 and 1999
Duma elections; and in 1994, “conducted
the only exit poll and quick count for the Mexican presidential
election”). <12>
The following examples of vote-rigging of a high profile nature should
serve to illustrate the endemic corruption in the system:
(A) In 1988, ex-CIA Director George Bush snr. was elected President. As
is well-known, the New Hampshire primary is a crucial forerunner for
any presidential candidate. Senator Robert Dole was the clear favorite
for theRepublicans - but Bush snr. won unexpectedly. How come? The
Governor of New Hampshire was one John Sununu, a computer engineer, and
the computer voting machine being used was a ‘Shouptronic’ Direct
Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine, supplied by Ransom Shoup,
who “had been twice convicted ofvote fraud in Philadelphia.”.. “It
completely lacked an ‘audit trail,’ an independent record that could be
checked in case the machine ‘broke down’ or its results were
challenged.”... “A source close to Gov. Sununu insists that Sununu knew
from his perspective as a politician, and his expertise as a computer
engineer, that the Shouptronic was prime for tampering. The concept is
clear, simple and it works. Computerized voting gives the power of
selection, without fear of discovery, to whomever controls the
computer.” On becoming president, Bush appointed Sununu Chief of Staff
in his administration. <13>
(B) Chuck Hagel was CEO of American Information Systems (AIS), a
computer voting machine company, until 1995, when he resigned in order
to run for the Senate in Nebraska in 1996. He unexpectedly won and thus
became the first Republican to do so in 26 years! AIS counted the
votes. In 1999 AIS merged with Electronic Systems & Software (ES&S). In
the following 2002 election, Hagel retained his seat, this time by a
landslide (83%). ES&S counted the votes!
AIS had been founded by brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich, in turn funded
by the Howard F. Ahmanson Co. - who therefore still have a stake in
what is now ES&S. (Howard Ahmanson belongs to the Council for National
Policy, a hard right wing organization, and also helps finance The
Chalcedon Institute, a fundamentalist religious group). The parent
company of ES&S, in turn, was McCarthy & Co., founded in the ‘90’s by
Michael McCarthy who subsequently acted as campaign director to Hagel
in his two elections - and is now Chuck Hagel's treasurer. Further,
Hagel had been president of McCarthy & Company, but resigned following
his election in ‘96 - but remains a major investor in the company!. It
is of pertinence to note here that ES&S also has a connection to the
Bush family. Jeb Bush's first choice as running mate in 1998 was Sandra
Mortham who was a paid lobbyist for ES&S and received a commission for
every county that bought its touch-screen machines. <14>
(C) Jeffrey W. Dean was the senior vice president and a director of
Global Election Systems in 2000 and 2001. He had been released from
prison in August 1995 after having served a sentence for theft in the
first degree. “Defendants thefts occurred over a two-&-a-half year
period.” While in prison, he had become friends with John Elder, who
had subsequently been released in November 1996 after doing 5 years for
cocaine trafficking. After release, Dean and his wife became owners of
Spectrum Printing & Mailing (the funding for this remains a mystery) -
and in 2000 sold this firm to Global Election Systems (GES) for $1.6
million - as a result of which, Dean served as Snr. Vice-President and
director of GES (noted above). In January 2002, GES was bought out by
one of the larger computer-voting companies, Diebold Election System,
who, in 2001, had contracted to build voting machines for GES. Dean was
retained as consultant for Diebold.
On 4th February 2002, John Elder (see above) was made general manager
of the Printed Products branch of Diebold. Weldon O’Dell, CEO of
Diebold, had donated over $200,000 to the Republican Party in the 2000
and 2002 campaigns - but is better known for his recent letter in which
he promised to deliver Ohio’s votes to George W. Bush in 2004! <15>
(D) Database Technologies (DBT Online) was founded by Hank Asher, and
was a company involved in the George Bush jnr. election fraud. The
group once had a data management contract with the FBI. However, this
was terminated following allegations that Asher was associated with
Bahamian drug dealers. In 1998, the state of Florida signed a $4
million contract with (DBT Online), which later merged into
ChoicePoint, for the purposes of providing a central voter file listing
those barred from voting. (As of 2002, Florida is the only state which
hires a private firm for these purposes).. The state Florida contracted
with DBT in November 1998, following the controversial Miami mayoral
race of 1997. The 1998 contracting process involved no bidding and was
worth $2,317,800!
On 17th April 2000, at a special Congressional hearing in Atlanta,
ChoicePoint Vice-President James Lee testified that Florida had ordered
DBT to add to the list voters who matched 80% of an ineligible voter's
name, and on February 16, 2001, DBT Senior Vice-President George Bruder
testified before the US Civil Rights Commission that the company had
misinformed the Florida Supervisors of Elections regarding the usage of
race in compiling the list.
ChoicePoint Vice President Martin Fagan admitted that at least 8,000
names were incorrectly listed in this fashion when, the company was
passed on a list given by the state of Texas, these 8,000 names were
removed prior to the election.He described the error as a "minor
glitch". He is also quoted as saying “"Given the outcome of our work in
Florida and with a new president in place, we think our services will
expand across the country." In January 2000, Pennsylvania terminated
its contract with ChoicePoint after alleging that the firm had
illegally sold citizens' personal information. In 2002, ChoicePoint
generated earnings of $200 million on revenue of $791 million. The
company employs 3,500 people at 52 locations within 26 states. <16>
(E) According to Mark Lewellen-Biddle of Purdue university, “the three
largest voting machine companies in America are Election Systems and
Software, Sequoia and Diebold”, Sequoia being the second largest “with
roughly one third of the voting machine market. In 1999, the Justice
Department filed federal charges against Sequoia alleging that
employees paid out more than $8 million in bribes. In 2001, election
officials in Pinellas County, Florida, cancelled a $15.5 million
contract for voting equipment after discovering that Phil Foster, a
Sequoia executive, faced indictment in Louisiana for money laundering
and corruption.” <17> And for good measure, Alex Lefebvre added that
Sequoia is largely controlled by the British cash-printing firm De La
Rue, whose parent , “private equity firm Madison Dearborn, is a partner
of the Carlyle Group, the investment firm that employs the current
president’s father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.” <18>
The above examples are by no means comprehensive , but they are surely
adequate enough to illustrate that the criminal element could only have
permeated the electoral process - and for so many years - with, at the
very least, the connivance of the higher echelons within the political
structure of the country. Which brings us back to the Help America Vote
Act of 2002 (a duplicitous misnomer, if there ever was one!), and its
effect on the coming presidential election this year - to say nothing
of its effect on the crucially important ‘primaries’ very soon. Of one
thing we can be sure: the votes will once again be rigged, as
illustrated above, and confirmed as promised by Weldon O’Dell of
Diebold above - unless the American enfranchised public wake up very
quickly and take the matter into their own hands. There is little sign
of this so far.
The very concept of democracy is at stake.
ENDNOTES
<1> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/vote-d24.shtml.
<2> www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ruling_Elites/Policy_Formation_TPTB.html
<3> “Plausible Denial” by Mark Lane 1992 Plexus Publishing ltd. (p. 98)
<4> Ibid (pp 99,100)
<5> Ibid (pp102,103)
<6> http://www.votescam.com/orderbook.html
<7> http://nairobi.mwc.edu/~rdean8it/HIST200R/types.html.
<8> “Votescam: The Stealing of America” by James & Kenneth Collier 2000
Vistoria House Press (pp18,19)
<9> Ibid. (pp84-88)
<10> Ibid. (pp22,23)
<11> http://www.exit-poll.net/pool.html..
<12>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/election/
2001844416_exitpolls27.html.
<13> op.cit.”Votescam” (pp13-16)
<14> http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/INF307A.html.
<15> http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm.
<16> http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint.
<17> http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=490_0_1_0_C
<18> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/vote-d24.shtml.
This is on http://www.bilderberg.org/wwiii.htm
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