Go back to Voting Machine Webpage
Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush
By Lynn Landes 10/29/02
"I'm mad as hell!" says Charlie Matulka.
It looks like a high-tech ambush. But Matulka isn't going down without a fight. The feisty construction worker is running for Nebraska's U.S. Senate seat against incumbent Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Matulka's "war chest" is less than $5000. But campaign financing isn't his biggest concern. Who owns the voting machines and how easily they can be rigged or "malfunction" is what's got him all riled up. He's calling press conferences... demanding to be heard.
That might be difficult. Omaha's largest newspaper is part of the only company in Nebraska certified to count votes on election day. And Chuck Hagel has been an intrinsic part of that company for a long time.
According to his press office, in 1995 Chuck Hagel resigned as CEO of American Information Systems (AIS), the voting machine company that counted the votes in his first Senatorial election in 1996. In January 1996 Hagel resigned as president of McCarthy & Company, part of the McCarthy Group that are one of the current owners of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), which itself resulted from the merger of AIS and Business Records Corporation. According to publicist/writer Bev Harris, Hagel is still an investor in the McCarthy Group. ES&S is now the largest voting machine company in America. One of its largest owners is the ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company.
A call to the Office of
Integrity, Voting Rights Division, Department of
Justice (DOJ) in Washington D.C. regarding this extraordinary conflict-of-interest, earned this writer a terse "no comment." That
makes sense. In over 40 years of voting machine "malfunctions" and
election malfeasance, the DOJ still treats voting machine
companies and their owners with kid gloves.
Charlie Matulka is just the
latest target of America's thoroughly corrupted voting system.
In a groundbreaking effort, Bev Harris and this writer are compiling extensive information on the voting machine companies operating in the United States. Voting machine companies are privately held and extremely secretive. They form a web of overlapping ownership, financing, staff, and equipment that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to separate one from the other.
ES&S, the largest voting machine company in America, claims to have counted 56% of the vote in the last four presidential elections. Again, it's owned by the ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company, the McCarthy Group, and former owners of Business Records Corporation. ES&S was created from a merger between American Information Systems (AIS) and Business Records Corporation. Bob and Todd Urosevich founded AIS in the 1980's. Bob is now president of Diebold-Global, while brother Todd is a vice president at ES&S. Business Records Corp. was partially owned by Cronus, a company that seems to have a lot of connections to the notorious Hunt brothers from Texas, as well as other individuals and entities, including Rothschild, Inc.. Right wing Republicans Howard Ahmanson (who financed AIS) and Nelson Bunker Hunt have both heavily contributed to The Chalcedon Institute, an organization that mandates Christian "dominion" over the world.
Sequoia Voting Systems appears to
be the second largest voting machine company, accounting for about 1/3 of the voting
machine market. As of May 2002, Sequoia was purchased by Great Britain's De La Rue from
Ireland's Jefferson Smurfit Group, who retain a 15% share. Smurfit was just bought
by Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity investment firm. De La Rue owns 20%
of the Great Britain's national lottery. In 1995 the Security and Exchange
Commission filed charges against four employees of Sequoia, alleging that they
inflated revenue and pre-tax profits. In 1999 the Justice Department filed
federal charges against employees of Sequoia alleging that during a 10-year
period $8 million in bribes were paid out. Louisiana's Commissioner of Elections Jerry
Fowler had run up some big gambling debts in
Atlantic City, according to reporter Daniel Hopsicker. In all, 22 people were indicted, 9 plead guilty. Fowler
went to jail, but big fish Pasquale "Rocco" Ricci of New Jersey got one year of home detention.
Advanced Voting Solutions is
the new name of another scandal-ridden voting company, Shoup Voting Solutions.
Their current top management, Howard Van Pelt and Larry Ensminger, were executives for
Diebold-Global until late last year. Officers of Shoup Voting Machine Co. were
indicted for allegedly bribing politicians in Tampa, Florida in 1971, according to
the San Francisco Business Times. was convicted in 1979 of conspiracy and obstruction of justice
related to an FBI inquiry into a lever machine-counted election in Philadelphia.
Shoup got a three-year suspended sentence. Meanwhile, Philadelphia has bought
new voting machines from Danaher-Guardian, which appears to only sell voting
machines formerly known as the "Shouptronic."
Danaher-Guardian is owned by
billionaire brothers
and Mitchell
P. , who
were described by columnist Jack Anderson in 1988 as "a pair of corporate
raiders out of Washington DC." Again, Danaher-Guardian appears to only sell
formerly Shouptronic voting machines.
Diebold-Global's current
president, Bob Urosevich, was the co-founder of American Information Systems
which
became ES&S. As mentioned before, Diebold-Global's top managers, Howard Van Pelt and Larry Ensminger,
recently moved to Advanced Voting Solutions-Shoup.
And so it goes. We have an voting system that appears to be in a constant state of name change and rotating management, but always under the private control of the rich and infamous. Meanwhile, Congress has just passed a law that effectively throws hundreds of millions of dollars at voting machine companies that have a record that includes partisanship, bribery, secrecy, and rampant technical "malfunctions."
Personally, I'll never vote
on a machine again if I can help it. For the next election, I'll vote
"absentee" (i.e., through the mail). In fact, Oregon has wisely
rejected voting machines altogether and handles its entire election through the
mail.
Maybe those states are like Charlie Matulka. They know an ambush when they see one.
Lynn Landes is a freelance journalist. She writes a column which is published on her website www.EcoTalk.org. Lynn has been a radio show host, a regular commentator for a BBC radio program, and news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA.
Lynn Landes, 217 S. Jessup Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 629-3553 / (215) 629-1446 (FAX)
lynnlandes@earthlink.net
