by Lynn Landes 10/2/03
When will the Democrats wake up and smell the
fix? There is a reason why George Bush and his cronies wear a perpetual
smirk on their faces. There's a reason for their cocksure confidence. They
may not win every election, but if they don't, it will because
they chose not to. For nothing is clearer than this, Republicans dominate voting
technology companies in America. And they have foreign partners.
A handful of Republican corporations and
British-owned companies control the vote count in California and across
the nation. Britain and it's offshore territories not only shelter
corporate America from taxes due to the U.S. Treasury, the Brits are also
providing a haven for vote-counting companies like Accenture, the
former Andersen Consulting, currently located in Bermuda and slated to
count the military online vote in 2004. It's all enough to make one
wonder who won the Revolutionary War... American patriots or the British and
American Tories?
And as California Governor Davis goes,
so may go other elected officials, maybe even some Republicans. Any elected
official from either party who has crossed President Bush should
start worrying.
For those who are still living in the Valley
of Denial, and think that the California recount is a fair election, here
is the breakdown.
On a geographical basis, British-based Sequoia takes the lead in the vote
count in California counties. Twenty-one counties use Sequoia voting
technology, 15 counties use ES&S, 14 - Diebold, 6 - DMF Associates, and 2
counties use PollStar. On the basis of registered voters, ES&S takes
the lead with 7,305,680 voters, Sequoia - 3,682,051, Diebold - 2,412,971,
PollStar - 1,308,789, and DMF Associates - 593,978.
ES&S,
the nation's largest voting company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald
Company and has solid ties to the Republican Party. ES&S claims on their
website that they tabulated "56% of the
U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections." Diebold
Election Systems, is the second largest company with 33-35% of the
electronic vote, according to a Diebold spokesperson. Walden O'Dell, Diebold's
chief executive, recently wrote a fund-raising letter for the re-election
of President George Bush. Then there's Sequoia. It is owned by De La
Rue, a British-based company and the world's largest commercial security
printer and papermaker. They also own a 20% stake in Camelot, the operator of
the Great Britain's National Lottery.
Want to take any bets on who wins the California recall, the U.S. presidency
in the 2004 election, and maintains control of both houses of Congress?
Of course, not all of the counties will use company technicians to
program their software for the upcoming election. They may, like Los Angeles
County, use county employees or independent contractors to do the job. Even if "Ralph
from the county," programs the software... who is this guy? Why
should voters trust him to count their votes? What ever happened to
public oversight of the vote count? With voting machines counting the
vote, what do poll watchers watch? What do Federal Observers observe? How do
they enforce the Voting Rights Act? The technicians who program these machines
can be manipulating votes right, left, and center...and nobody would be the
wiser.
All the studies that show how well or poorly
different voting systems work, such as the 2001 CalTech/MIT Report, do not
take into account deliberate vote fraud. The researchers study
"residual" or lost votes, meaning undervotes and overvotes. Even the
October 2001 GAO report says, "...FEC generally agrees with most of our
observations and recommendations, including that human factors are not being
addressed in the revised voting equipment standards and that FEC needs to
accelerate their development in future iterations of the standards."
A "human factor" is the accidental or
deliberate manipulation of votes by humans.
The technological take over of the vote began
over 100 years ago with the introduction of lever machines. Today, we're
facing a paperless electronic and Internet voting process controlled by
Republicans and the British and only god knows who else. It is making a
mockery of our elections. A paper ballot, a pen, a ballot box, and a
local hand-count is the simple technology that most nations use to
elect their leaders. Our use of complex technology has taken public oversight
completely out of the process, making our elections completely
vulnerable.
And it doesn't really matter whether private
corporations or public servants control the technology. Any use of mechanical
or electronic voting technology is an open invitation to vote fraud and
technical failure. Any use of sophisticated voting technology
concentrates the risk of fraud or failure into the hands of those who control
it.
If we're going to fix this mess, we need to fix it
right. The machines must go. And so must the Brits, the Republicans, and
anyone else who seeks to control American elections.
Lynn Landes is publisher of Ecotalk
(www.EcoTalk.org) and a news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. For the
past year she has been covering voting technology and democracy issues.
Formerly Lynn was a radio show host for WDVR in New Jersey and a regular
commentator for a BBC radio program. She can be reached at (215) 629-3553 /
lynnlandes@earthlink.net
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