Seeking HELP from vote fraud activists and/or stock market watchers

Ever heard of something called 'SRI,' or Socially Responsible Investing? Check it out:

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http://www.citizensfunds.com/content/history.asp

Scholars agree that socially responsible investing originated more than 200 years ago with religious groups who refused to invest in companies that were associated with "sin" products like alcohol, gaming and tobacco.

The modern day SRI movement came into its own in the 1960s - during the Vietnam era - as investing practices came under scrutiny. Conscientious investors wanted to make sure that the companies they invested in weren't part of the military-industrial complex, and they began "screening" their investments to eliminate those that played a role in the war effort.

Over the next few decades several events occurred to further develop socially responsible investing. During the 1970s the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Endangered Species Act each contributed to the heightened sensitivity on the part of investors. In the 1980s the divestiture movement against apartheid in South Africa served as the real proving ground for SRI. While foreign investment in South Africa continued to grow, American companies began to withdraw en masse - prompted in part by the shareholder activism efforts of an increasingly strong and vocal SRI community. The 1990s saw heightened focus on tobacco-related litigation and sweatshop labor. As we enter the decade of the 2000s, there seems to be growing interest in the concept of corporate sustainability.

The influence social investors exerted historically helped to establish the persuasive power of SRI. Many lingering doubts about the viability of socially responsible investing have gradually faded as many SRI funds have chalked up impressive gains.

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Here's a whole site dedicated to SRI:

http://www.socialfunds.com/

...and there are others.

So here is my question? Why can't we organize a coalition of socially responsible investors - I mean a lot of them, a big project here - and buy a majority of Diebold stock? Become the majority stockholders, declare the company's voting machine section a public trust, and open the books?

Can this happen? Is it at all possible?

http://crainscleveland.com/article.cms?articleId=38375

Diebold stock soars with voting machine's success

By SHANNON PETTYPIECE

Diebold Inc. is feeling vindicated after its heavily scrutinized electronic voting machines performed as hoped on Nov. 2, and investors are reflecting that sentiment on Wall Street.
The stock price of Diebold, primarily known as a maker of automated teller machines, closed at $54.58 a share last Thursday, Nov. 11, an increase of nearly 22% from Diebold's closing price of $44.84 on Oct. 26, one week before the elections.

...more...

and annother poster talks of buying ... FOX....

I think both of you are onto something...

If we got this done we cold do it, but only if we get enough of us, to do it.... will take many of us

To Kerry?

Lotsa people.

Paging Mr. Soros. Your investment opportunity is ready.

up lots of money on this campaing and knows exactly what is at stake... he's seen this movie before.

As to the legality, I have no clue, first off, if they are publicly traded we may be able to arrange for it... but quite frankly I have no idea of the legality....

MoveOn may play...

Dean may play....

I know I am willing to pony up money for a share or two... don't have much, but will pony up some.

Maybe. Shit, I dunno....sounds like a great idea, but all the rich liberals out there are too chickenshit to even consider going the Scaife route and using their moolah to set up a liberal media infrastructure comparable to what the right created over the course of thirty+ years.

Scaife, Coors, et al. were willing to pony up a couple billion, knowing that they'd lose in the short term monetarily, but gain in the long term ideologically. All the Streisands, Afflecks, etc. are just too fucking wussy to undertake such a project. So even something as risky as your idea, Will, is probably too outlandish for them to consider (and they wonder why the right wins elections!)

Plus, all the people capable of investing that much money vote GOP 'cuz of the tax cuts anyway.

We're up against people who have bought victory, over a period of many years - Bought the politicians, bought the media, and now they've bought the vote. Fighting fire with fire seems the best route at this point. It is capitalism, after all. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I am looking for actual rules-and-regs oriented reasons why this wouldn't work. Is it illegal, or what?

by the way streissand and Afleck are chump changed COMBINED when compared to Scaife, now George Soros, on the other hand....

entertainment industry, any of whom COULD be making a real difference and doing some long-term strategic planning instead of just complaining to the media, inadvertantly causing an anti-Hollywood backlash in the process. Like Will says, they could be buying the media, bit by bit, but no......What about Oprah Winfrey? Eisner? Katzenberg?

All it took for Scaife and Carnegie et al. to set up their various Institutes and Foundations was a few billion (adjusted for inflation). Really, if one or two A-list types felt like it, they COULD set up their own AEI or Heritage Foundation and have just as much capital. But they won't take the risk because they like living the high life and keeping their Q rating up.

All they need to do is to take a page from the RW playbook. Unfortunately for us, Scaife and the Four Sisters were old, bitter, hateful men with the tenacity of the cockroach...where are all the bitter, hateful old liberals with billions to spare? Hollywood, for starters.....

Well, here's the deal.

To buy 1% of Diebold's shares (symbol DBD) on the open market would run about $36 million.

The entire market cap (meaning all the shares x market price) is $3.8 billion. That's with a B. To control it would be half that, or $1.9 B.

Okay, let's say you got lucky and a bunch of people had $1.9 B to spend on Diebold stock. Problem is, 77% of the stock is held by institutional entities, like Fidelity etc. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=DBD Another 1% is held by insiders, like top execs, like Wally "Ohio's electoral votes for you Dubya" O'Dell. So, unless something weird happened, you'd have trouble obtaining more than 22% of the stock.

Then, there's the self-interest problem -- would folks want to put down $1.9 B, only to expose the rampant problems inside the company's election division, and shrink their investment?

Okay, and here's another problem -- ES&S is looking less clownish about their security than Diebold, but perhaps every bit as dangerous to the public. And, who knows about the others -- they may be as bad. The UC/Berkeley study of Florida seemed to find ALL electronic voting machines spitting out odd results.

And, here's the big problem -- even if Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic do EVERYthing right, programming, hardware, security, etc., there is no way they can make paperless electronic voting secure. Can't be done. Too many points of attack, too much money at stake, too lucrative to steal, too little chance of getting caught. This is the opinion of esteemed computer scientists I've talked to -- you've talked to some of the same ones! The chain of custody of the machines/software is too long, from development to manufacture to trucking to warehousing to voting to transport to tabulator.....

It's an inherently insecure design to use paperless electronic counting of confidential votes.

Let me know when you get the $1.9 billion, and I'll help you design a PR campaign instead of buying Diebold, ok? <G> Hey, I'll even throw in a couple of Senators at no extra charge.

...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Thanks. That's the answer I was looking for. I guess.

May I ask how you come by your wisdom on this?

I'll PM you.

Start our own voting machine company dedicated to transparency and open source code.

At its current price, Diebold is valued at 3.8 billion dollars; buying a majority of the stock then, would cost you at least 2 billion bucks, but probably more as the price would go up as people found out about this idea. Then would come the proxy fight (hire lawyers and investment bankers), and lawsuits management would launch accusing you of trying to destroy the company. The pricetag for Diebold alone would be far more money than was spent on all elections combined in 2004 -- that's a whole lot of internet donations, and I believe more money that Soros has.

Could voters sue Diebold in a class action if there is substantive proof of fraud or at least over the fact that the machines are not secure?