Diebold, Premier Election Solutions, & Election Systems and Software
Who are these companies, what are they attached to, and why are they counting 80% of your vote, with little to no proof of who or what was actually voted for? Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems, Inc), now currently Dominion Voting Systems based in Toronto Canada, is a company with heavy ties to the banking industry. Premier Election Solutions is headquartered in North Canton, Ohio, formerly run by
Bob Urosevich and his brother,
Todd Urosevich. Premier Election Solutions, Inc. is currently run by David Byrd as stated by wikipedia, which is odd because wikipedia claims the company was sold to Dominion. The company has changed its name and been sold, which muddies the waters quickly, but noteworthy, is the fact that after the company changed its name to "Premier Election Solutions," the company was then acquired by Election Systems and Software, who was started by
Robert J. Urosevich. It needs to be noted, that there have been several controversies and even attempts by California and Maryland, to remove their machines and revert to paper ballots, but invariably, these attempts have failed, in the case of Maryland, by having the funding for the paper ballots rejected in July of 2008. There have been
SEVERAL controversies with Diebold, including internal memos that were posted and forced to be removed with a cease and desist order.
If you feel confused, don't feel bad. It gets confusing quickly. Basically - Diebold = Premier - is then sold to ES&S, which then sells ES&S assets to Dominion, but states that Premier is currently operated by David Byrd (even though the company has been "sold" to a Canadian company) due to an anti trust lawsuit against ES&S. Why they would be allowed to hold sway in an American Anti-trust lawsuit is beyond me, as is the how and why any foreign company would be allowed to count American votes, both important points.
There have also been Sherman Anti-trust lawsuit(s) filed (one successful challenge), but none of those matter because of this:
Election Systems and Software has its headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska and was started by Robert J. Urosevich (the same "Bob Urosevich" listed above), with the help of his brother Todd (who was formerly working for IBM). Like Diebold Election Systems, ES&S has gone through several name changes, has had various acquisitions, controversies, and Anti-trust suits filed against it. ES&S was one of the top four providers of voting equipment used in the November 2004 election. The other three were Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic. Four companies counting all of the votes in the United States for a presidential election? This is listed under note 15
http://criminalbrief.com/?p=1892 in Wikipedia's article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Systems_%26_Software#cite_note-CB1-15 . While I don't like the source Wikipedia uses for its article, it does cite facts that I have come across from other sites. It also again references that the Secretaries of State are the ones responsible for deciding which machines to use, in the event that the State Congress declines to legislate against it or provide a budget for paper ballots. Moving on...
There has been much written about the Urosevich Brothers and black box voting. I had vaguely paid attention to it, until today, when I came across an article on them, that had several of the hyperlink references removed and returning 404 error messages, links from long established newspapers. What is odd, is that even though there are people paying attention to this, not enough are, and certainly not the federal government. Why would I say that?
Today, I came across a few astounding facts:
1. That the Urosevich Brothers (or the companies they founded) are counting 80% of the American vote.
2. That there is no public oversight of the voting (and even if their was, the brothers have been caught with faulty software being installed into their machines).
3. That the companies have had convicted felons as managers.
4. That the companies allow live streaming of the results to third parties and proclaim victories before all the votes have been tallied.
5. That the companies' machines can and do have their contents attacked and modified with memory cards, and it's been proven.
We discuss ballot stuffing and voter fraud (and rightfully so), but we discuss it as though it is something that happens solely before the counting has taken place, often, never questioning what happens with all of the votes after the fact. It bears mentioning, that even as recently as Obama, there have been recounts in states like Florida, in what was a hotly contested election, "President Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of the 2000 election."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/11/10/florida-vote-count-obama-romney/1696343/ , but it goes on to say that Obama had 332 electoral votes. Who and what counted the votes from the other states? Who
SPECIFICALLY was watching? Were you? I wasn't. I took their word for it, or even if I suspected voter rigging, what was I going to do about it?
We start by finding all of their dirty, little secrets and bringing them here.
Being that I have made four principle claims that need to be supported by evidence, let me start with that task:
1. That the Urosevich Brothers (or the companies they founded) are counting 80% of the American vote.Thus far, I have found that four major companies have counted votes in the past elections. Many of these articles are dated, and since, there have been anti-trust suits that have spread assets and companies around. The first thing we need to do, is prove that it is possible for two people to have utter control over the vote counting process, and that even if articles are dated, see how it happened, and who is counting the votes now.
This article
http://www.rense.com/general52/bros.htm , makes the claim that "Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election." They cite Bev Harris' book, "Black Box Voting."
Digging into it further, with the search query, "count 80 percent of the votes" Google will initially return six results. The search engine Dogpile also returns six results, but different sources, so I went back to Google and had the omitted results added and got 218 results. When I type in "count 80% of the votes," i get (2) hard matches from Google. The point being, people are writing books and saying that two people wield such control over the American Voting System, a system I might add, that people have died over, in the recognition of their right to freedom, and no one is talking about it. If you Google "uber" you will automatically get 189 million ways to get to where you're going, but give someone the keys to the kingdom, and no one says a peep. That is odd.
Quora mentions this. "80% of the US will vote using privately owned electronic voting machines. How do we prevent election fraud, if a hardcopy recount isn't possible?"
https://www.quora.com/80-of-the-US-will-vote-using-privately-owned-electronic-voting-machines-How-do-we-prevent-election-fraud-if-a-hardcopy-recount-isnt-possibleSomeone answers wisely, "For openers, we destroy and remove ALL electronic voting machines throughout the United States and its territories, and revert to paper ballots ONLY."
In regard to Harris' claim that they do indeed count 80% of the votes (not getting into the fact that their machines "drop" votes, and a plethora of other problems), there are others that cite the claim; "Chuck Hegel of Nebraska, a CEO of one of the four major voting machine corporations, resigned his position to run for public office. He then won the vote, counted by his own machine. He had a $5 million ownership in the company that counted 80 per cent of the votes. Chuck Hegel’s opponent paid for a recount on the same machines that Hegel had built."
http://discourseanddisclosure.com/frontPage/pushButton.htm and "Beverley Harris, at Black Box Voting, (her book can be downloaded for free here:
http://blackboxvoting.org/black-box-voting-book/ ), said that she went into the computer, by-passed the password and changed the vote in less than 10 minutes. In three different electoral counts in three different states, each candidate who won, did so by exactly the same number of votes!
A CEO of one of the four major voting machine corporations, resigned his position to run for public office. He then won the vote, counted by his own machine. He had a $5 million ownership in the company that counted 80 per cent of the votes."
http://dablogfodder.blogspot.mx/2012/03/winning-elections-in-21st-century.htmland It needs to be mentioned, that when I'm looking fo a major news outlet to cite as a source, the only one that I can come across, from this link
http://www.wanttoknow.info/votingproblems which leads to this link from
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/elections/sfl-pn.pre.7a4oct30,0,4018585.story, coming back as dead, amongst others, which specifically made the 80% claim. I wonder if that has anything to do with Diebold also having their internal memos removed from the public eye?
Granted, the CBS link from the wanttoknow link works and puts the number in "Diebold's" hands as well as Sequio's (another manufacturer) at just 30%, they do admit that 30% of the voting populous (30 million +/- voters), a huge number of people with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/e-voting-is-the-fix-in/This also doesn't include the counting machines from the same companies, that will optically scan ballots, many times "dropping votes" and prone to error, so based on that Bev Harris' claim of 80% isn't so far fetched. In fact, Harris doesn't allow her book to be replicated in any form without specific permission, but I can paraphrase. On page 28 of her book, she discusses ES&S counting 56% of the votes in the United States. She also discusses Hugo Chavez using the machines in other areas of her book, further discusses error rates of up to 100% in Orange County, California, and cites her sources, primarily, ES&S themselves, on their own website admit to counting 56% of the vote themselves. They don't even hide it.
2. That there is no public oversight of the voting (and even if their was, the brothers have been caught with faulty software being installed into their machines).It isn't really necessary to drive this point home, because the fact is, if you're reading this, in all likelihood, you have never seen any votes counted other than in school, have you? I know I haven't. Keenly, MSNBC has also made this claim. Also, they put the number at 50 million (even more than the claim made by CBS above).
"Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touchscreen machines on Nov. 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it..."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5762054/from/RL.4#.V-DTMa0hPtQIn regard to faulty software, why do that when you can rig the software outright, as testified by Clinton Eugene “Clint” Curtis, before members of U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio.
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/03/watch-computer-programmer-testifies-under-oath-he-coded-computers-to-rig-elections.html The fact that these companies operate at all, much less, in secrecy, is something that should no longer be tolerated at all, in any election, at any level.
3. That the companies have had convicted felons as managers.This is a matter of fact and matter of public record for anyone that wishes to look.
"The Director of Operations under Diebold had been imprisoned for computer fraud and five other felons were identified in the company. "
http://discourseanddisclosure.com/frontPage/pushButton.htmJeffrey Dean - programmer for Diebold, case no. 89-1-04034-1, had access to the entire voting system in King County, and 24 hour access.
"“Defendant’s thefts occurred over a 2 1/2 year period of time, there were
multiple incidents, more than the standard range can account for, the ac
tual monetary loss was substantially greater than typical for the offense,
the crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and
planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized account
ing system that defendant maintained for the victim, and the defendant used
his position of trust and fiduciary responsibility as a computer systems and
accounting consultant for the victim to facilitate the commission of the offenses.”
4. That the companies allow live streaming of the results to third parties and proclaim victories before all the votes have been tallied."Clearly the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe computer was something Burnham did not want me to discuss."
http://www.votefraud.org/how_a_private_company_counts_our_votes.htm5. That the companies' machines can and do have their contents attacked and modified with memory cards, and it's been proven. "A report commissioned by Ohio’s top elections official on December 15, 2007 has found that all five voting systems used in Ohio (made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems); and Hart InterCivic) have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html?_r=2&oref=sloginIn the article, Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said hardware and software problems had been corrected in his company’s new products, which will be available for installation in 2008, but goes on to state that "It is important to note,” he said, “that there has not been a single documented case of a successful attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the United States," but acknowledges that there was indeed the need to remedy hardware issues and upgrade software. The part that he leaves out, is that who from the public was there to verify that the vote count was accurate? Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner claims that "two elections workers on charges of rigging recounts" led to convictions, so there has indeed been voter rigging. I'm certain if I look more, I will find more cases of it, because where it's happened once, it will happen again.
Quoting others here, this isn't something new, but this quote mentions something important:
Quote of the Day II
"Diebold, one of the biggest manufacturers of computerized voting machines was until recently headed by a CEO who happened to be a vocal supporter of President Bush. Writing in the New York Times in 2003, Paul Krugman sought to blow the lid off: 'You don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results... The credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.' That theme was rolled out again this election season on left-wing blogs and in the print media. There was even an HBO documentary, 'Hacking Democracy,' which emphasized the danger of Diebold disenfranchisement. But then, just as the paranoia reached its peak, a funny thing happened: The Democrats won on Election Day. As suddenly as they had blared to life, the alarm bells fell silent. The critics paused for a moment, then burst out in a new refrain: The people have spoken! The realignment is here! Democracy works! And so the Diebold villain has retreated to the shadows for the next two years, at least" -- from an editorial in National Review.
It is important to mention that it is likely that most of us have our own political views. There has been much stated about Goldman Sach's laundry list of former employees receiving government positions after leaving the banking giant and everything else wrong with the banking industry that is "too big to fail,", or of Bill and Hillary Clinton's "pay to play" foundation, or even of Trump's issues.
Independently of what flavor of politics you choose, shouldn't you be the one allowed to make that choice? Shouldn't it be respected? I think it should, and I might not even necessarily agree with you or even like you, in fact, I probably don't. That doesn't mean that our voices shouldn't be heard and listened to by those we charge with governance.
We need to all call our state secretaries, governors, and congressman and insist on paper ballots, that can be counted physically, repeatedly, and with hard proof. We discuss dead people and foreigners voting, as well as absentee ballot fraud, but never question the hand that counts the ballots, do not even know who they are and there is a problem with that.