Did you know…

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
   www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
   
   
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
   www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
   
   
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
   www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
   
   
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
   www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
   
   
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
   www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
   
   
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
   www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
   
   
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
   www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
   
   
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes
   www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
   
   
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
   www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
   
   
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
    www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
    
    
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
    www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm
    
    
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
    www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
    
    
13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
    www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
    
    
14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
    www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
    
    
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
    www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
    
    
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here)
    wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
    
    
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
    www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
    
    
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
    www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
    
    
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
    www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
    
    
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
    www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
    www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
    www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
    

Rampant proliferation of voting machines without any accountability is an invitation for fraud. In the recent initiative elections in Ohio earlier this month, newspaper polls of registered voters varied from the actual Tuesday vote in a statistically inconceivable margin.

Concerned citizens have been sounding an alarm for rectifying this lack of checks and oversight, but to date, nothing of significance has been done by lawmakers to ensure that vote counts are accurate and free from any monkey business. Paper ballots can be recounted; proprietary machine algorithms with dubious security provisions overseen by rabid partisans cast a fog of suspicion and a ring of total uncertainty about the the voting process. While 100% proof of no impropriety may be a utopian goal for any system, action must be taken to position the engine of democracy above reproach. It is beyond belief and an outrage that this is not being remedied ASAP.