Now that we've met the men behind the Hart Intercivic machines that will count the vote in two Ohio counties come election night ( Bain Capital business buddies of Mitt and Tagg Romney). How about meeting the assortment of characters who own the rest of the machines that most people will be voting on in the rest of the country.....
Let's take a look shall we.....
And quite a lovely lot they are too....Where to start? Well how about one of the former owners, a Mr. Walden O'Dell, who while CEO of the Diebold company made the now infamous jaw-dropping comment to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush. While he was CEO of Diebold Mr. O'Dell also happened to be a top fund-raiser for George W. Bush. quite a conflict of interest wouldn't you say?
Now to present day.....Bob and Todd Urosevich are hardly household names and yet the two brothers have managed to monopolize American election technology for decades..They were the original founders of ES&S a voting company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Together ES&Sand Dominion ( Formerly Diebold) will count the votes of approximately %70 of the country. Who are these brothers and how did they get their start? Well they got millions of dollars in start up money from the far-out right wing evangelical christian family...The Ahamansons' of Irvine. These right wing Republican ties permeate the voting machine industry. And so , it would seem, criminal ties.. from a sensational November cover story in Harper's by Victoria Colliers....
One would think ( or hope) that a private industry entrusted with America's votes would require the highest degree of personal integrity from it's employees. As it happens, many of the key staffers behind our major voting machine companies have been accused or convicted of a dizzying array of white-collar crimes, inclulding conspiracy, bribery, bid rigging, computer fraud, tax fraud, stock fraud, mail fraud, extortion, and drug trafficking.
link herelink here
Wonderful!! HOw in the world did such slime come to be involved with counting the votes for the worlds remaining super power? Well, oddly as it may seem, there is no Federal oversight of the voting machine companies!! You read that right! There is actually more oversight with our slot machine industry....which may be an appropriate metaphor..becasue we are gambling with our future!!
Please read Colliers whole article...it is long but it reads like a spy novel..
So here we are..Governors like Rick Scott of Florida trying to scrub ex-felons from the voter roles, while we have convicted felons running the vote count!! Why are we letting these people run the elections?? Does it mean becasue there are shady characters behind the voting machine companies, that it means there is something shady with our elections? No, but why take the chance? Let's take the lead from Ireland and Germany and other European countries who have thrown the voting machines on the junk pile...much better option then throwing our democracy in the same location...
4:45 PM PT: Wow!! Chuck Todd just tweeted , " Voting machine conspiracies belong in the same category as the Trump birther garbage" No wonder we can't get any coverage of this issue....I bet you if some of Obama's buddies owned voting machines he wouldn't be so blaise.....