(FL Attorney General) Crist asked to investigate voting-machine companies

Crist asked to investigate voting-machine companies

By Jeff Burlew
March 23, 2006


The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition is asking Attorney General Charlie Crist to investigate the three voting-equipment companies certified to do business in Florida.

All of the companies, Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems and Software and Sequoia Voting Systems, have refused to sell equipment to Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, who is trying to buy machines that can be used by people with disabilities. The federal Help America Vote Act requires the machines in all voting locations.

Sandy Wayland, president of the coalition, said she believes it's no accident that none of the companies is selling to Sancho, who last year tested Diebold equipment and found it had security flaws.

"Why is it that all of them decided to say no?" Wayland asked. "We suspect that there is collusion and that there is an antitrust violation here."

Crist's office acknowledged Wednesday that it had received the complaint.

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060323/NEWS01/603230323/1010/NEWS01

HONESTY and his efforts to achieve election TRANSPARENCY and to protect from the voters of Leon County from having their votes stolen, changed and disappeared by these privately-controlled ELECTION THEFT MACHINES!

Diebold: CEO was Wally O'Dell, a Bush campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004.

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture--based on Windows!), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which, among other things, touts the death penalty for homosexuals). Diebold and ES&S--which together 'tabulated' 80% of the nation's vote in 2004, using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--have an incestuous relationship. They are run by two brothers--Tod and Bob Urosevich.

Sequoia: Now employs former Republican California Sec of State Bill Jones and his chief aide Alfie Charles to push their voting systems--the people who, while in office, initially brought these election theft systems to California!

The CORRUPTION wrought by Tom Delay and Bob Ney, with the $4 billion "Help America Vote Act" boondoggle, is simply UNBELIEVABLE. We have 'bought and paid for' election officials across the nation. In fact, what they did--and in my opinion, set out to do--was to utterly destroy our election system with these boondoggle billions, lavish lobbying and 'revolving door' employment, to make our election system penetrable and hackable from the inside by Bushite operatives at the companies in question.

Ion Sancho stands apart--as incorruptible--much like Calif Sec of State Kevin Shelley--whom the Bushites destroyed. This is a similar campaign to destroy every last shred of integrity among election officials in the U.S. It is monopolistic. It violates anti-trust laws and RICO laws. It is a criminal conspiracy of the first order, aimed at the heart of our democracy.

But people are fighting back. See this morning's thread on Maryland! A victory for paper ballots!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x418263

And see the Resources for American Revolution II, below!

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Two things to keep in mind for the 2006 elections:

1. The electronic fraud CAN be beaten by big turnout, in some cases. Tell people the truth, and ask them to HELP BEAT THE MACHINES! But we should primarily focus on EVIDENCE-GATHERING in 2006, not just for challenging the results, but for building the case against these privately-run electronic systems, to pursue the vital long term goal of getting rid of them and restoring TRANSPARENCY. See resources, below.

2. INDEPENDENT exit polls are desperately needed in '06. The war profiteering corporate news monopoly exit polls are not to be trusted. They are promising to fiddle the results again, and this time to not let anyone capture the real exit poll numbers (as happened in '04). Pressure the Democratic Party to fund independent exit polls in all Congressional elections! (It's the least they can do for us--after letting the Republicans destroy our right to vote!)

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Some resources for American Revolution II:

Breaking--just announced: www.VoterAction.org is suing the state of California and 18 Calif county registrars on behalf of 25 California voter/plaintiffs, on the illegal Diebold "re-certification".
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2180496

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.votetrustusa.org (news of this great movement from around the country)
www.UScountvotes.org (statistical monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.bradblog.com (also great, and devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)* :patriot: :applause: :patriot:
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.johnbonifaz.com (running for Massachusetts Sec of State on strong election reform and antiwar platform)

*Some tributes to TruthIsAll, who is very ill:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417007
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417231
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x675477

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Bob Koehler's latest: "Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

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Throw Diebold, ES&S and ALL election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

That is typical BS from these election theft machine makers!

:kick:

if they had nothing to hide illegal , why are they so afraid of Ion Sancho?? i would think the answer would be they are afraid ION will test their bogus machines! move along nothing to see here..and if you see it ,and prove it, you better shut your mouth...wouldn't want to wake up the truely ignorant!!

Hell our dem party down here in fla argues "with" the rethugs..nothing wrong with those damn machines..the dems will tell you in my county..no matter what they are shown nor how much they are shown..the dems here where i am are just as complicit..and i am not putting dems down.,.but those dems in power here refuse to even look at the problems!
but our grassroots attempts to educate the dems running the party here are making some breakthroughs ..some media are perking up their ears.,.forcing the dems to stop their fighting us on the subject..now the groundswell of citizens are embarrassing the dems to at least listen to us!

but our biggest objections to looking into the problems have come from our own party!

fly

TALLAHASSEE - The disclosure that a company doing work for the state may have given cheap labor in India access to the confidential information of up to 100,000 state employees -- making them vulnerable to identity theft -- is starting to haunt the governor's race of state Attorney General Charlie Crist, who declined to investigate the case.

The issue was first revealed by two whistle-blowers who said they were so worried about what Denver-based GDX was doing, that they asked for Crist's help in a lawsuit replete with internal company e-mails and spreadsheets.

But the response, they said, ''appalled'' them even more: They heard almost nothing from his office, which declined to take the case without explanation.

snip

Crist said his office began ''taking a look'' into the case three weeks ago -- a year after the suit was filed -- because ''new facts are developed every day.'' But he said he was unaware that DMS and Convergys told a legislative committee last week that a security breach had occurred.

snip

Crist's office issued a written statement Wednesday listing all the work it had done on the India case, including ''consulting'' with the Tampa law firm.

Not true, said attorney John Newcomer. He said Crist's office called only a few times to inquire about ``procedural issues, nothing substantive.''

''It's not sour grapes. We will prosecute the case on behalf of the state of Florida. If the AG doesn't think it's important enough, we do. We will do their work for them,'' said Newcomer, who found the lack of interest by Crist's office ``unusual.''

snip

Democrats say Crist did nothing for an overarching reason: Convergys is a Republican Party donor and hired a top Crist campaign advisor, lobbyist Brian Ballard.

snip

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/14163909.htm