Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush
by Lynn Landes
Dissident
Voice
October 29, 2002
"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. Ransom Shoup 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 Steven M.
and Mitchell P. Rales, 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. The state of Washington offers
that option, and Colorado is considering mandatory mail-in voting.
Maybe those states are like Charlie Matulka. They know an
ambush when they see one.
Lynn Landes
is a freelance journalist specializing in environmental
issues. She writes a weekly column which is published on her website
www.EcoTalk.org
and reports environmental news for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA.
Lynn's been a radio show host and a regular commentator for a BBC radio
program.
Links:
* http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm
* http://www.talion.com/Hagel.html
* http://www.csd.cq.com/senate_mem/s0531.html