“I have no question that somebody who's smart enough with a computer could probably rig it to mis-tabulate. Whether that has happened yet I don't know. It's going to be virtually undetectable if it's done correctly..."
- Randal H. Erben, Special Counsel on ballot integrity for President Reagan.

More On Election 2004

Secret Meeting

Touch Screen voting machines that we should trust to handle our vote, with no way of verifying the accuracy of the results are put out by companies that at least appear to be unqualified for a job of this magnitude and are run by groupies of conservative republican fundamentalists.

Can one make such a blanket statement, that a handful of voting machine companies are incapable to provide the security required for such operations, that their software is not fit to be found in a ms. pac-man video game? Considering the lack of public disclosure - companies hiding behind proprietary rights, allegedly to protect their Einstein coding from competitors - how could one assume such a conclusion? Well at least one company's files were breeched, due to that company's "sophisticated" security. That company being Diebold headed by Bob Urosevich. Consider this Diebold internal office memo that states -

This space originally had an excerpt from Diebold internal memos confirming the vulnerabilities of their system. The memos of Diebold confirm concerns of these touch screen voting machines. (If this is not true let Diebold open their memos to the public as they concern a most important public function, and should be considered criminal to conceal.) Diebold has taken action and are shutting down full sites with memos contained. They're not just shutting down their "property" but that of the entire site - not their "property" - concerning the entire voting machine industry. Read the report.

Let's see, Bob Urosevich of Diebold was involved with the programs at ES&S; and ES&S and Sequoia share or shared the same software and hardware. Sequoia bought Business Records Corporation's optical scan vote tabulation business as part of a 1997 Dept. of Justice anti-trust action with ES&S — under a licensing agreement, both companies used the same equipment and software. Bob then went on to run Diebold's Global Election Systems, leaving his brother Todd at ES&S. Recently one of the major DRE machine manufacturers, Sequoia (who thwarted a Palm Beach candidates attempt to inspect their machines) has signed on to utilize software technologies developed by VoteHere.

So ES&S and Diebold share links as does ES&S and Sequoia. And Sequoia also shares software with VoteHere - VoteHere - privately held electronic voting machine company in Washington, D.C., run by a former senior military aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and whose board includes former CIA Director Robert Gates.

VoteHere was founded by Jim Adler, who is the CEO. They have no visible revenue stream -- one or two sales over a four-year period will do little to support offices in Bellevue, Washington, London, and Washington D.C. and a pricey R&D department.

What they do have is defense industry connections. Defense Policy Board member Admiral William Owens, who is also Vice Chairman of Pentagon contractor SAIC, is the Chairman of the Board at VoteHere. Another VoteHere board member, Robert Gates, is a former CIA director who also was a director of SAIC; he now heads the George Bush school of business.

After the Hopkins/Rice study emerged, the states of Maryland and Ohio asked the SAIC to do an "independent" study of Diebold security. The SAIC is a curious choice for "independent" study since its Vice Chairman is VoteHere's Chairman, and VoteHere claims to have the solution ( to fix Diebold ), should flaws be found in Diebold's system.

VoteHere has apparently released enough details to sell their cryptography solution to Sequoia, who is the third-largest voting machine vendor in the U.S. The Strange Saga of VoteHere

Considering this intra-industry relationship can one assume all that's been found out about Diebold does not apply across the voting machine community? Without public disclosure and all other info suspiciously guarded one would have to be prudent in this matter and consider Diebold's vulnerabilities business norm. It would appear that hiding behind proprietary rights is not so much to protect companies from each other in this small community as it is protecting the industry from public scrutiny.

Spillane and Mercuri wrote in November 2002 about Sequoia Voting Systems, an outfit seeking to install electronic voting booths in Santa Clara County, California. Most of Sequoia's machines provide nothing in the way of receipts or physical audit trails, which would facilitate a recount, ripening the prospects for electronic election fraud.
She and other experts have also been barred from examining Sequoia's product, because it is sold under restrictive trade-secret agreements.

In February 2003, Daniel Spillane blew the whistle on his former employer, VoteHere. Spillane, who was fired from VoteHere in 2001, alleged in a wrongful termination lawsuit against his former employer, that VoteHere undertook measures to thwart an independent review of its software. He said he voiced his concerns with company executives and that he was fired hours before VoteHere was scheduled to meet with representatives from the Independent Test Authority, an auditing group that scrutinizes electronic voting equipment and software, and the U.S. General Accounting Office.

But does it really matter, all that talk about political connections - I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." Wally O'Dell, CEO Diebold - and aren't the concerns over quality of product unwarranted? After all there is a system of checks and balances in place to secure us from any potential mishandling of votes, intentional or otherwise, certainly the FEC has our backs.

Yes there are organizations set up to certify machines before they go into the field. For instance SAIC has been employed to go through Diebold's voting equipment in the aftermath of the John Hopkins Report.

The revelation that Ronald J Knecht, Senior Vice President, SAIC, and a former defence intelligence chief, is connected to the proposed voting machine whitewash push seems certain to fuel public concerns about the number of conflicts of interest in the voting machine industry.
SAIC has been tasked by the Governor of the state of Maryland to report on security concerns around Diebold Election Systems software and hardware.

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Whose SAIC -

Science Applications International Corp.

Under a plan approved by SAIC's board Monday, a five-member search committee was established to oversee the transition to a new chairman and CEO. Director A. Thomas Young, the former president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta Corp., was named as chairman of the search committee. April 9, 2003 Bruce V. Bigelow
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

A. Thomas Young former president and CEO of Martin Marietta. For those who slept through the nineties' corporate mergers - Martin Marietta is the Martin in Lockheed Martin. The Lockheed Martin of Star Wars fame, former board member Lynn Cheney.

"The world's most powerful corporation, one that literally controls the fate of the earth, is Lockheed Martin." Dr. Caldicott The New Nuclear Danger.

As announced last week, the panel will be chaired by A. Thomas Young, former president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta Corp. It will conduct a comprehensive review of program management, engineering and manufacturing processes, and quality control procedures at Astronautics, Missiles & Space and Michoud Space Systems. The panel will report its findings to the Corporation's senior management not later than September 1, 1999. Lockheed Martin, Media Relations, 301/897-6195

SAIC - Science Applications International Corp. may be the most influential company most people have never heard of.

The federal government, its main customer, often doesn’t want the public to know what SAIC is doing and, as one of the nation’s largest employee-owned companies, it escapes investor scrutiny.

SAIC's top lieutenants are accustomed to keeping low profiles -- and keeping secrets. They include the Pentagon’s former chief intelligence officer; a lead architect of the Star Wars missile defense program in the 1980s; the retired general who led the U.S. operation in Somalia in 1993, to name a few.

With 40,000 employees worldwide, San Diego-based SAIC is enmeshed in some of the government’s most sensitive work, from redesigning Army combat systems to bioweapons defense and improving electronic snooping for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency.

Though SAIC lacks the name recognition of Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, its research prowess and Washington insider connections have landed it some of the most prized government contracts. The Associated Press July 21, 2003

SAIC-developed software employed by U.S. intelligence-gatherers scans newspapers, books, magazines and other documents in every major language for clues for terrorist attacks.

1991:SAIC snares Army's massive net management systems

SAIC's winning team features its subsidiary Telcordia Technologies, along with a slew of government contractors including TRW, DynCorp and Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications. Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World Fusion, 05/24/01

1991: A controversy erupts after former defense secretary Melvin Laird, a member of the SAIC board, apparently interferes in an indictment of the company by asking Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to halt the prosecution. SAIC later accepts responsibility for falsifying tests of soil and water samples from toxic waste sites, which were done for the Environmental Protection Agency. The company pays more than $1.3 million in fines.

1994: Investigators search SAI Technology, a division of SAIC, looking for proof of allegations that the company collected $20 million to $25 million for Pentagon contracts that it could not deliver. SAIC later agreed to pay the government $2.5 million.

SAIC has over 35 companies, subsidiaries and equity partners. A partial listing is provided below.

AMSEC LLC

Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC

Data Systems & Solutions

Hicks & Associates (H&AI)

Saudi SAI

SAIC is also one of the larger war- profiteers in Iraq, "San Diego-based Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), one of the Pentagon's largest, most lucrative and politically connected contractors. Of the six billion dollars it earned in revenue last year, about two thirds came from the US Treasury, mostly from the defense budget.

SAIC is among the most mysterious and feared of the big 10 defense giants - feared because of its ruthlessness in procuring contracts, says the Washington Post; mysterious, in part because, as an employee-owned company, it does not have to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and because its press officers are notorious for not providing information. Indeed, for this article, SAIC press officers referred all questions to the Pentagon's general press office.

SAIC, which specializes in advanced technologies that can be applied to the battlefield, particularly in command and control systems, is now deeply involved in the Pentagon's most important operations in Iraq.

That it should be is really no surprise, taking into account its various connections. Among the hawks on the DPB, Rumsfeld's mini-think tank, for example, is retired Admiral William Owens, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who also served as SAIC's president and CEO and is currently its vice chairman.

Another member of SAIC's board is retired Army General Wayne Downing, who until last summer served as the chief counter-terrorism expert on the National Security Council (NSC) staff.

Before that, Downing also served as a lobbyist for the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi expatriate long championed by the neo-conservatives in the administration and the DPB. Like Shultz, Downing was also on the board of the CLI, which, not coincidentally, worked closely with the INC.

Another prominent SAIC executive and former vice president also has a long-standing connection with Iraq: David Kay, the former UN weapons inspector who was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in June to head the effort to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

A former senior science official in the Reagan administration, Kay argued forcefully last fall against relying on UN weapons inspections to "contain" Iraq and for removing Saddam Hussein from power. "
Massive military contractor's media mess
By Katrin Dauenhauer and Jim Lobe

Another military industrial complex player that's been brought into the HAVA voting machine mix through a secret meeting; whose participants included R. Doug Lewis, who heads The Election Center, Diebold Election Systems, ES&S, Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart Intercivic, a few more voting machine companies, and the ES division of ITAA; was Northrup Grumman.

2) Participants asked if a task force composed of defense contractors and defense procurement contractors could help them “again” like they did with HAVA. They mentioned Lockheed (weapons contractor) and Northrop Grumman (defense contractor) and Accenture (defense procurement contractor). They discussed that these companies were the driving force behind the HAVA bill, which requires purchase of new electronic voting systems and also purchase of new, statewide, electronic voter registration.

The vendors who have advertised the new voter registration system are: Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and Election.com which is owned by Accenture. The vendors for voting machines are: Northrop Grumman (through an alliance); Diebold (ties to Bush administration); Diversified Dynamics (a weapons manufacturer; its machines created by SAIC); General Dynamics (defense contractor); ES&S; Hart Intercivic (alliance with Accenture); Sequoia, and VoteHere, which is seeking to provide a new “vote verification” software which will go into EVERY machine made by EVERY vendor.

21 Aug 2003 - WASHINGTON (AP) - Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to pay $80 million to settle separate allegations of overbilling the government and selling defective equipment to the Navy, the Justice Department announced.

So the defense industry - who collect about 50% of our total budget - and rabid supporters of Bush and Cheney play a large part getting these non-verifiable touch screen voting machines into every district throughout the nation.

And outside the nation, the military overseas, who controls that vote - Last year, while President Bush marshaled U.S. forces for the invasion of Iraq, the patriots at the Department of Defense awarded the contract for a new online voting system for the military... to an offshore company.

It gets worse. Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is the system and Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting of Enron bankruptcy fame) is the company. And although Accenture has not been officially implicated in the Enron scandal, they have created a reputation of their own that is already raising eyebrows.

This is hot off the newswire -- 7/15/03 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Accenture Ltd., the former Andersen Consulting, disclosed Tuesday that it might have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Chairman and CEO Joe Forehand, on an earnings call with analysts and reporters Tuesday, said the consulting firm's Middle East operations could be in non-compliance with the Act, which prohibits the bribery of foreign government officials by U.S. persons. Offshore Company Captures Online Military Vote Posted July 17, 2003 by Lynne Landes the peoples voice.org

Of course this would be the place to suggest an all-encompassing conspiracy bent on negating all votes contrary to new world order, status-quo, illuminati-inspired, fascist- enforced policies to surface.

This space is not meant to lend legitimacy to "looney" conspiracy theories (we're still building that page) but we should look at all the info coming in and apply a little common sense.

An insider argues against conspiracy notions;

"I just have been in the bowels of all levels of government and I just don't see secret groups planning the long range strategies that sometimes fly out there. I don't believe people are that smart and that long range thinking to pull off these strategies."

"All of these companies are not just defense contractors. Accenture has many non-defense related government contracts. So do all of the rest. What they were shopping around for was partners with the smaller voting machine companies who need to have a partner to handle a voting machine contract. The Avante's and Accupoll's and Truvote's of the voting world all have "big brother (not in an Orwellian way)" partners that can foot the financial bill to bid on these contracts. If anyone of them win a statewide contract (on the order of $50-150 mill), a big partner has to finance the deal."

He suggests that Lockheed is in it just to make the smart cards.

Of course it's spicier to consider the largest defense contractor in the world, Lockheed, is involved beyond the production of some smart cards that a 15 year old computer geek could make in his garage, but that shouldn't be considered., - that's some x-file "who shot J.R." plot on Temptation Island. Not to be found on our Fantasy Island in a Leave it to Beaver world.

Concerning ITAA the company brought into the secret meeting by Lewis of The Election Center, to handle the P.R. - sell the idea of these machines to the voting public;

"ITAA just does what the money tells them to say. They are not opposed to anything. They just are playing up to what they perceive as their potential clients needs".

Not smart enough for conspiracy, not long range enough? Not smart enough for an Umberto Eco Foucalt Pendulum plot perhaps, but election rigging has been going on since inception by simple flim-flam cons, as far as range goes we're only talking about 2004.

The insider does not consider the players smart enough. Of course they're not smart they're specialized, compartmentalized machines controlled by greed for money and lust for power, ironically powerless to act other than market demands. No these people should not be assumed smart, they know how to chase a dollar, a janitor knows how to clean, it has nothing to do with intelligence.

We know that this is all simply business, through a market driven program that rules this country. And we know from Milton Friedman that "The corporation cannot be ethical, it's only responsibility is to make a profit."

And I think it's safe to expand and include - protect profit and a friendly environment to increase profit. When considering the precepts of corporate capitalism, mirrored in the actions of corporate CEO's and the stranglehold of a conditional market, one would have to ask, if you had the ability to fix an election, why wouldn't you, - Atlas Shrugged, with a wink and nod - in fact wouldn't it be dereliction of duty to let such an opportunity pass, the opportunity to secure for yourself, friends, business partners - "The Stock Holders" - continued growing wealth for at least the next four years.

The defense industry which is comprised of some of the most powerful corporations in the world has about a fifty percent share of our monies, this is business, do they want to lose that or do they want to increase it? Milton Friedman tells us they don't really have a choice, it must be increased - "for the good of the economy. For the good of all."

Whose going to increase it?

Do we assume that these huge corporations are run by incompetent businessmen, that they don't know how to make a dollar? Corporate commandments seem quite inflexible in this regard, make more money by whatever means necessary, and we've seen in this country and throughout the world there is no line left a billion dollar corporation won't cross to pick up a dime. After all they "must remain competitive."

More on certification - NEXT>

Take a look at just some of the latest payouts to the defense industry>