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How
We Lost The Vote - How To Get It Back
by
Lynn Landes
(A
speech by Lynn Landes given at the forum: Voting Machines: A Threat To
Democracy? Sunday Sept 7, 2-5 pm at the Ethical Society in Philadelphia.)
Walden
O'Dell wrote a letter the other day. He wrote a fund-raising letter to Ohio
Republicans. And, in that letter O'Dell said that he was, "committed to
helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next
year."
Walden
O'Dell is the Chairman of the Board of Diebold Election Systems, the second
largest company in America whose business it is - to count your vote.
O'Dell's
letter should serve as a call to action for Americans, and for citizens around
the world, who have surrendered their elections to technology and those who
control it. American tax dollars are helping to fund a worldwide conversion
from paper ballots to computer and Internet voting. The effort to promote
electronic elections is being led by three international organizations: The
International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), the International
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), and the United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs. IFES was founded in 1987 by the late
F. Clifton White, a high-ranking Republican Party official who is credited with
turning the GOP into a bastion of right wing conservatives.
Today,
the right to vote in America is held hostage by technology - a technology that
stands between the voter and a real ballot - a technology that delivers only
circumstantial evidence of a vote while people push buttons, punch holes, throw
levers, and dial-up.
What
is a real vote? In many countries it's a paper ballot that you can touch and
mark and know who you voted for, that gets hand counted at the end of the day by
local election officials in full view of fellow citizens and poll
watchers...all engaged in safeguarding your right to a free and fair election.
But in America today, a vote is an electronic image, or an indecipherable punch
card, or a paper tab that lever machines produce. Do we need both man and
machine counting the votes? And if that's the case, whose count should prevail
in the end?
It's
not just political elections that are threatened by voting technology. The
expanding use of the Internet to elect the leaders of our civic associations,
business groups, and labor organizations... threatens the very fabric of our
society. For the companies and individuals who control voting technology can
come from anywhere and everywhere, unhindered by government restrictions or
oversight or accountability. Last spring Election.com, an Internet voting
company, was purchased by Osan, Ltd., a group of Saudi investors. In the year
2000, Election.com was used to count the votes in the Arizona Democratic
Primary. Although another company, Accenture, has recently purchased the public
sector portion of Election.com, that still leaves the private sector.
Election.com has about 600 customers who use its Internet voting service,
including the Democratic National Committee, the Pennsylvania State Employees
Credit Union, the Sierra Club, and the Florida Bar.
We
are in a constitutional crisis. Our right to vote for our political leaders and
to have our votes counted properly is not just in jeopardy - there is mounting
evidence that it has slipped away.
How
did we get in this mess? It all started about 100 years ago. In 1892, the lever
voting machine was first used in Lockport, New York. By the 1930's most large
cities were using these machines. In 1964, electronic scanners and computers
entered the voting process. It was also in 1964 that pre-election polling and
exit polls began to dominate the news. And although polling data can be used to
raise red flags where election fraud may have occurred, polls can also be used
to create false expectations and in the case of exit polling, data can, and
some say was, used to legitimize rigged election results.
Today,
we're being told that touchscreen machines and Internet voting will make the
process of voting quicker and safer. But in the 2000 election, Canada hand
counted their paper ballots in four hours without suffering any of the
boondoggles that continue to plague our electronic elections. Even if it took
four days or four weeks to count ballots, democracy is not on a stop watch, where
time is more important than how the race is won. And how the race is won, is at
issue.
There
is a long history of voting machine irregularities that span the last several
decades. They have been documented in the Saltman Report, the book VoteScam, the
landmark article Pandora's Box, and in countless reports and news stories. And,
although we may prefer that this not be a partisan issue, voting machine
irregularities appear to overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates. This was
alarmingly apparent in 2002, when 74% of the upset elections went to Republican
candidates. Many of the Republican upset victories were well outside of the
margin of error of the pre-election polling.
Who
sells and services voting machines and technology is beginning to attract a lot
of attention. Only U.S. citizens can vote... but anyone can count your vote,
including felons and foreigners, political candidates and office holders, news
organizations and defense industries. Many voting systems companies have
partnerships and agreements with each other, making it difficult to separate
one from the other.
As
the situation stands today, three corporations (Election Systems and Software -
ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia) sell and service the machines and software that
counts about 80% of the electronic vote in the U.S..
ES&S,
the nation's largest voting company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald Company
and has solid ties to the Republican Party. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was the
past president of American Information Systems, the company that counted the
votes in his first election. AIS then merged with Business Records Corporation
to form ES&S, which then proceeded to count the votes in Senator Hagel's
second election. At that time, it has been reported, that the Senator had a substantial
financial interest in the company.
Sequoia
is owned by De La Rue, a British-based company whose machines will count the
votes in more California counties than any other company in the upcoming recall
election. De La Rue is the world's largest commercial security printer and
papermaker and owns a 20% stake in Camelot, the operator of the Great Britain's
National Lottery.
The
Internet voting business is dominated by two corporations: Accenture, which is
based in the British territory of Bermuda, and VoteHere from Seattle,
Washington. The U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded a coalition of
corporations, led by Accenture, the contract to provide the Internet service
that will count the votes of the U.S. military and other civilians in the 2004
presidential election. As many as 6 million voters could use their system.
Accenture was formally known as Andersen Consulting, a subsidiary of Arthur
Andersen, a company convicted of destroying evidence in the Enron scandal. A
major business partner of Accenture's is Halliburton, Vice president Dick
Cheney's former employer.
The
current Chairman of VoteHere, the leading worldwide supplier of Internet voting
technology, is Admiral Bill Owens, a former senior military assistant to both
Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Ex-CIA director Robert
Gates, who was caught up in the Iran Contra scandal, also sits on the VoteHere
board.
But
there are many other corporations that work with the top voting companies and
therefore have a piece of the action. It's a who's who of corporate America, a
corporate America that we are routinely reminded doesn't want to pay taxes,
likes to cook the books, and frequently engages in predatory business
practices. Some of the companies who want to count your vote include:
Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and various military defense companies, such as Northrop
Grumman, General Dynamics, Unisys, National Semiconductor, and Perot Systems
Government Services. Yes, even Ross Perot wants to count your vote.
The
new kid on the block is Populex, which is creating an electronic voting system
for Illinois. It has on its advisory board, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle
Group. Carlucci was the former Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
Administration, a Deputy Director of the CIA during the Carter Administration,
and also worked in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Carlucci's
business partner is former President George H.W. Bush.
The
boards of many of these companies are dominated by top donors to the Republican
Party, former high ranking military officers, and several ex-CIA directors. The
CIA directors include: James Woolsey, Bobby Ray Inman, and John Deutch, and as
mentioned before, Robert Gates and Frank Carlucci. The CIA, it should be
remembered, has a decades-long track record of assisting in the brutal
overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world.
Some
of the largest companies in the elections industry are privately held and
therefore not open to scrutiny by investors or the public. And in a similar
vein, the software used by voting systems companies to count your vote, is also
not open to inspection... except by three individuals selected by a private
non-profit organization called, The National Association of State Election
Directors, which has close ties to the elections industry.
So,
today, in most voting precincts, there is nothing for the poll watchers to
watch, nothing for Federal Observers to observe, and no real opportunity to
discover if votes are being altered and if election fraud is being committed.
In many cases, there is no paper ballot or paper trail of any kind, eliminating
the possibility of a recount or an audit. When legal challenges to election
results do occur, these companies can and do go to court and successfully
shield their technology from inspection by claiming proprietary rights. And
even if their technology is open to inspection, the manipulation of votes can
occur in an endless variety of ways and remain undetected.
The
lack of transparency and accountability of voting technology in use today makes
the Voting Rights Act of 1967 and its enforcement...moot...and that fact
alone…one would think... would set the stage for a solid legal challenge. But
to date there has been no litigation filed using that argument. Strangely
enough, voting rights groups like Common Cause and the ACLU of Southern
California have actually adopted policies in opposition to paper ballots. And
some organizations for the disabled are taking a similar position. "Total
access" to voting is really code language for imposing on the electorate a
paperless voting process that provides no security against election fraud or
technical failure.
Where
does the federal government come into the picture? Nowhere, really. There is no
federal agency that has regulatory authority over the elections industry. There
are no restrictions on who can own or operate a voting systems company. There
are no mandatory federal standards for voting technology, and no federal
certification of that technology. Meanwhile, the states are relying on
guidelines and a certification process that are essentially controlled by the
industry. The free-market is in control of our elections and the result is that
the process has been privatized and our votes are up for grabs.
Congress
has made the situation worse. With no safeguards in place, The Help America
Vote Act (HAVA) allocated $3.8 billion to encourage states to buy the latest
voting technologies - touchscreen machines and Internet voting. These
technologies, like the ones that have gone before them, are an open invitation
to vote fraud and technical failure, except on a massive scale. And
particularly, with the introduction of Internet voting, we are truly entering
the Land of Oz where one person can literally control elections across the
country.
The
right to vote and to have your vote counted properly is the centerpiece of our
democracy. Yet, most people today say that they don't believe that their vote
really counts. And perhaps, they're right. Perhaps they've sensed it
intuitively. Perhaps, when they look at our elected leaders, out of touch with
the needs of most voters, unwilling to break with wealthy donors, they have
every reason to suspect that elections are a charade to convince voters that
the power lies in their hands, when it truly rests elsewhere. The concealment,
the secrecy, the non-transparency, inherent in the use of any machine -
mechanical, electrical, computerized, or the Internet - is counter to a process
where local public oversight is a critical component to ensure our right to
free and fair elections. Instead,
voters are told that they should trust...trust in their election officials to
pick an honest company with sound technology. But faith and trust was not what
our forefathers had in mind when they created a government of checks and
balances. With our current voting process, those checks and balances are a
distant memory.
What
can be done? Speak out. Educate those around you. Most people haven't given
this issue a second thought. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice
should be sued for failure to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The exclusive use
of technology to vote, technology that counts votes in a manner that cannot be
observed, violates your rights. If technology is used, it should provide the
voter with paper ballot that the voter verifies and then gets hand counted at
the local precinct. And no election should depend on electricity or technology.
If the power shuts off, the election should go on. But, speaking for myself, it
seems that voting technology creates more problems than it solves.
As
I look out over this room, full of concerned citizens...as I receive a steady
stream of calls and emails...and see an increasing number of news stories about
this issue, perhaps a second American revolution is on its way. A revolution to
take back the vote. And it couldn't begin in a better place than Philadelphia.
Lynn Landes is a freelance
journalist. She publishes her articles at EcoTalk.org.
Formerly Lynn was a radio show host, a regular commentator for a BBC radio
program, and environmental news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. She can
be contacted at (215)
629-3553, or by email at: lynnlandes@earthlink.net
* Other Related Articles by Lynn
Landes
* Internet
Voting – The End of Democracy?
* Voting
Machine Fiasco: SAIC, VoteHere and Diebold
* Offshore
Company Captures Online Military Vote
* Suspicion
Surrounds Voter News Service
* Mission
Impossible: Federal Observers & Voting Machines
* 2002
Elections: Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and
"Way-Off" Polling Results
* Voting
Machines - A High Tech Ambush
* Election
Night Projections: Cover For Vote Rigging Since 1964?
* Elections In
America: Assume Crooks Are In Control