Diebold Payment to Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's Former Firm
The GOP and Jack Abramoff conspired and successfully stole our democracy through extremely corrupt dealings between Jack Abramoff, Greenberg Traurig, Convicted GOP Rep. Bob Ney of OH, the White House and really the entire GOP Congressional Caucus, in order to foist the hackable Diebold voting machines upon an unsuspecting and trusting public.
Full Timeline below the fold...
Wally O'Dell, head of Diebold, said he would do anything to get Bush elected and held a fundraiser in his house which Cheney attended. He also served on the Bush Cheney 2004 Committee for Ohio.
This truly reveals the sad fact that you can't trust Republicans. Period. And no one should ever vote for any Republican ever again, as a protest vote over this--the biggest American scandal of all times.
The Republicans clearly and deliberately stole our democracy. Here's the timeline that shows the criminal pattern. Use these facts and links liberally in Letters To The Editor. We need to play up the Abramoff Scandal more than ever now that it includes Diebold and vote-counting fraud.
1990s - Republicans and investment equity start several computerized voting machine companies, using proprietary software to hide the source code that actually does the counting. Diebold is centered in Ohio in Bob Ney's district, providing many jobs.
2000 - Katherine Harris and the GOP take the close election in Florida and force through Bush's stolen even though later tabulations show Gore won if all the votes had been counted. Paper ballots are discredited by the famous hanging chads, setting up the push for computer voting.
2001 - Ney's Chief of Staff David Distafano turns lobbyist for Diebold and at least one other voting machine company. One of DiStefano's crows about his having "an insider's edge to hard-to-reach political officials."
2002 - $3 billion HAVA bill mandating computer voting is passed in the House, shepherded by Ney, Abramoff and Delay, helping Diebold and the other companies write the legislation. Abramoff and Greenberg Traurig also use the HAVA bill to squeeze the Indian Casino Tribes to cough up more bribe money for Republicans and in lobbyist fees, with Abramoff and Ney lying about Sen. Chris Dodd and his help on phony amendment to aid casino gambling in the HAVA bill. Abramoff and Ney e-mails show outright fraud and bribery.
2002 - Programmer Clint Curtis testified that he was asked in 2002 by GOP Rep. Tom Feeney to create vote-stealing code for voting machine, which he does. This software seemed to have been used in the 2002 stealing of Sen Max Cleland's seat in GA.
2002- Distafano and partner Coffee rewards Ney with $20,000 in campaign contributions, starting in 2002. Abramoff has Indian tribes contribute tens of thousands of dollars to Ney and pay the notorious $100,000 for the St. Andrews golf junket.
2002 - Diebold and AccuPoll start paying Distafano and partner Roy Coffee $250,000 in lobbying fees. Diebold starts paying $275,000 in lobbying fees to Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's firm.
2003 - Ney prevents the mandating of verified paper trails for Diebold and the other companies.
2004 - ""in 2004 numerous news organizations reported that the RNC spent millions hiring a questionable company called Sproul & Associates to do voter registration. Election and law enforcement officials in multiple states opened investigations into this group upon published reports that that they hired temporary workers to register only Bush supporters, Pro-life supporters and Republicans. Thousands of voter registration applications collected from Democrats by registration workers paid for by Sproul & Associates were reported to have been destroyed in a number of states."- Donna Brazile. http://www.democrats.org/...
2004 - Ney writes "Dear Colleague" letter against amending HAVA for paper trails. In a clever twist, Ney "argued at the time that paper records on such machines would somehow disenfranchise disabled voters, who had been cleverly afforded a special provision in the bill which mandated at least one disabled-accessable device in every voting precinct in the country. That device, of course, would be a paperless touch-screen electronic voting machine, like the ones made by Diebold, which, legislators, vendors and lobbyists would later proffer, were required to meet provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)." Ney also stops Holt's bill to reform HAVA. http://www.bradblog.com/...
June 2004 - Diebold payment of $12,500 to Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's former firm. http://www.bbvdocs.org/...
July 2004 - Dick Cheney attends fundraiser in home of Wally O'dell and raises $500,000.
November 2004 - Massive Election Fraud in Ohio prevents voters from voting and changes counts through software. Kerry loses to Bush.
March 17, 2005 - First known use of the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR} for URL domain registration. This day must have been when Republican operatives Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and Jim Dyke--from the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign--formed this PHONY Institute with an official sounding name.
March 21, 2005 - Two business days later, the ACVR GOP bag men testify at the House Administration Committee hearing, really a smokescreen by Chairman Ney, to cover up the stealing of the 2004 Ohio Presidential vote. They cook up imaginary voter fraud epidemic to distract from the real stealing of the 2004 vote in OH by the GOP.
http://www.bradblog.com/...
August 8, 2005 - Pittsburgh Tribune Editorial on AVCR being a FRAUD: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/...
2005 - Bradblog Timeline on phony ACVR GOP front group: http://www.bradblog.com/...
August 2005 - In another voting scandal, Noe in Ohio guilty of election violations for 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign.
September 2005 - GAO report on HAVA disaster: http://www.bradblog.com/...
September 2006 - Ney indicted in Abramoff scandal and for unknown crimes, including perhaps taking illegal $34,000 bribe from casino. Ney to plead guilty and could get 10 years, recommend 27 month sentence.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...
Sources: http://www.bradblog.com/... others embedded.
There is also this:
Mr. Chairman, though our time is limited, I must bring to the committee's attention the most recent and perhaps most troubling incident that was related to my campaign on Sunday, December 12, about a shocking event that occurred last Friday, December 10.
A representative from Triad Systems came into a county board of elections office un-announced. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the up-coming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad supplied Tabulator (a card reader and older PC with custom software) is kept. He told them there was a problem and the system had a bad battery and had "lost all of its data". He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and another "spare" tower type PC also in the room. He may have had spare parts in his coat as one of the BOE people moved it and remarked as to how very heavy it was. He finally re-assembled everything and said it was working but to not turn it off.
He then asked which precinct would be counted for the 3% recount test, and the one which had been selected as it had the right number of votes, was relayed to him. He then went back and did something else to the tabulator computer.
The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand count had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count to come out exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers. He suggested making them look like employee information or something similar. The people doing the hand count could then just report these numbers no matter what the actual count of the ballots revealed. This would then "match" the tabulator report for this precinct exactly. The numbers were apparently the final certified counts for the selected precinct.
Triad is contracted to do much of the elections work in this county and elsewhere in Ohio. This included programming the candidates into the tabulator, and coming up with the rotation of candidates in the various precincts (that is, the order of which candidate is first changes between precincts). They also have a technician in the office on election night to actually run the tabulator itself.
Triad also supplies the network computers on which all of the voter registration information and processing is kept for the county.
It was unusual for the computers to be taken apart. At least one member of the Board of Elections was told the tabulator was in pieces when he called to check on the office.
The source of this report believes that the Triad representative was "making the rounds" of visiting other counties also before the recount. This person also stated they would not pass on the suggestion of the "posted" hidden totals, and would refuse to go along with it if it were suggested by the others in the office at the time.
The source of this information believes they could lose their job if they come forward.
http://www.truthout.org/...
PLEASE REMEMBER TO RECOMMEND TO GET THIS STORY OF SHOCKING CORRUPTION OUT THERE