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Electronic Voting

  • Voting Machine Issues
    • Hart Intercivic-Mitt Romney R Senator UT 2019-, Governor MA 2003-7, Financial Investment/Campaign Contributions in Hart Intercivic voting machines whose 2004 Ohio failure arguably threw the election to George W. Bush
    • Ohio 2004 Election       

History of Election Systems and Software (ES&S)

11208 John Galt Blvd., Omaha, NE,  CEO Tom Burt

Bob Urosevich is retired and living in Omaha. A sister, Sueann Devereaux, works in the programming department at ES&S.

  • 1976 Data Mark System, used in May 1976 and November 1976 Douglas County, NE elections Omaha World Herald
  • “In 1995, Bob Urosevich started I-Mark Systems, whose product was a touch screen voting system utilizing a smart card and biometric encryption authorization technology. 
  • “Up until 1995, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel had been chairman of ES&S (then called American Information Systems) before quitting the company in March of that year two weeks before launching his Senate bid.” Wired
  • 1997 Global Election Systems, Inc. (GES) acquired I-Mark after Howard Ahmanson Jr.’s funding (CNP, Claremont Institute, Dominionist, Religious Right)
  • September 2000 FL State Rep. Tom Feeney asked programmer Clint Curtis & Lee Yang at Yang Enterprises (ExxonMobil, NASA, FL DOT clients) to steal the election in West Palm Beach. Feeney testified before Rep. John Conyers in 2004. Feeney was Yang’s corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for Yang at the time. He wrote code that could change touch screen voting machine tallies undetected.
  • January 22, 2002 Global Election Systems (Bob Urosevich) sold to Diebold, OH ATM maker concurrent with the Help America Vote Act HAVA  introduced by, Rep. Ney, Robert W. [R-OH-18] electronic voting funding GES Senior VP (programmer Jeffrey Dean) was a convicted felon who had served time for sophisticated crimes involving “computer tampering”. Wired 
  • 2002 Election Reform Bill Rep. Ney accepted bribes from Abramoff to insert 4 amendments that would remove paper ballots, Ney helped Abramoff’s client Volz’s daughter with passport issue for Ney’s summer 2003 trip to Moscow
  • Wally Walden W. O’Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc. controversial big donor to Bush’s Rangers & Pioneers 2004 campaign/Karl Rove
  • August 2007 Diebold changes the name to Premier Election Solutions
  • January 20, 2007 HAVA sponsor Rep. Robert Ney sentenced 30 months for bribes from Jack Abramoff 2001-4
  • March 2008 Primary in Ohio, Diebold/Premier Election Systems machines dropped votes, settled in 2010
  • September 3, 2009  Election Systems & Software (ES&S) (Todd Urosevich VP, Bob Urosevich was President from 1979-1992 when it was called AIS, American Information Systems) acquired Bob Urosevich’s Premier Election Solutions (Diebold), giving ES&S 70% market share from 50%
  • January 21, 2010 Citizens United SCOTUS decision that the free speech clause of the First Amendment applied to all non-person organizations
  • May 19, 2010 “ES&S later sold the PRIMARY ASSETS [Intellectual Property of Premier Election Solutions/Diebold with Curtis’ code, and others] to Dominion Voting as part of an antitrust agreement.” Computerworld
  • June 2016 Nicole Nollette left IGT casino gaming and became Executive VP at Dominion Voting Systems. Background in liquor, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia investment banking before the 2008 crash, and a Navy officer at the SEAL base San Diego and in charge of a Detachment base in Greece 1998-2003.  She looks like a Fox News anchor, but has an Eric Prince-territory military background. h/t Twitter
  • DIEBOLD UNLOADS BELEAGUERED VOTING MACHINE DIVISION WIRED KIM ZETTER SEPTEMBER 3, 2009 

“Diebold, an Ohio-based maker of ATMs and security systems, purchased its elections business from Global Election Systems in January 2002, just as Congress was passing the Help America Vote Act, which allocated billions to states to purchase new voting machines. Diebold Elections Systems, however, barely had time to bask in the flow of federal funds before it ran headlong into controversy in 2003 when Diebold Inc. CEO Walden O’Dell, a fundraiser for former President George Bush, wrote in a letter to Republican supporters that the company was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004.

Criticism of the company and its machines remained constant as Diebold voting machines experienced numerous problems in election districts around the country, and incidents of company officials applying uncertified patches to machines were exposed. The most recent problem with the company’s system occurred in the 2008 presidential election in Humboldt County, California, when Diebold’s tabulation software randomly deleted nearly 200 votes. An examination of the system revealed that its audit logs failed to record significant events, such as someone deleting votes from the system; it also contained a delete button that allowed anyone with access to the system to erase the audit logs.

In 2007, Diebold attempted to distance itself from its elections division by changing the name of the business to Premier Election Solutions. It took about three years but Diebold has finally managed to get out of the election business. The company announced Thursday that Premier Election Solutions, Diebold’s beleaguered voting machine division, has been acquired by Election Systems and Software (ES&S).

ES&S purchased the company for a mere $5 million in cash, plus 70 percent of any revenue collected on outstanding accounts through the end of August. According to Diebold’s announcement the sale was “consummated” Wednesday.”

THREAD Continued from Jack Abramoff Page

The Council for National Policy (to which Kellyanne, Bannon, the DeVos family, the Mercers, Pence, Ken Blackwell, and two men whose families funded the largest voting machine vendor in the U.S.) has set a deadline of 2020 for restoring “religion and economic freedom and Judeo-Christian values” under the Constitution. Dec 27, 2017 By Jennifer S. Cohn December 27, 2017 Citations updated July 20, 2018.

“The CNP has extended its tendrils not only to Russia, but also to America’s largest voting machine vendors. As of 2010, the two largest voting machine vendors in the United States were Election Systems & Software (ES&S) & Diebold Election Systems (later renamed Premier Election Systems).

FEDS MOVE TO BREAK VOTING-MACHINE MONOPOLY Wired KIM ZETTERMarch 8, 2010

“Even before the sale, ES&S, based in Omaha, Nebraska, was the nation’s largest voting-machine maker, with machines being used in 43 states. ES&S systems were utilized in counting approximately 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections according to the company’s website. The company also created statewide voter registration systems used in California, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Its acquisition of Premier, the second-largest voting machine maker with equipment used in 33 states, gave it a near monopoly on election gear and would have had the company providing 70 percent of voting equipment in the country. Premier was a division of Diebold, Inc, which is based in Canton, Oh. Although there’s no evidence that e-voting machines have ever been rigged, the political partisanship of voting company owners has only added to concerns about the systems. Howard Ahmanson Jr., a right-wing Christian fundamentalist millionaire based in California, bankrolled the founders of ES&S. Ahmanson, heir to the Home Savings of America fortune, no longer holds a stake in ES&S.”

Ahmanson was a member of the Council for National Policy in 1984-85, 1988 StateMaster Citation added 7/20/18] and sat on its Board of Governors in 1996 and 1998. Wikidoc. ‘Ahmanson is a board member of the John M. Perkins Foundation and (along with his wife) the Claremont Institute. He was a member of the Council for National Policy in 1984-85, 1988 and sat on its Board of Governors in 1996 and 1998. He has written articles appearing in The Los Angeles Times, Philanthropy, Religion and Liberty, and other publications. TIME Magazine named the Ahmanson first in their 2005 list of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, classifying them as the financiers.’”

Howard Ahmanson, Jr.

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.a.htm#ahmanson [Howard Ahmanson — CNP member 1984–85, 1988, 1996, 1998–7/20/18 UPDATE — THIS LINK HAS RECENTLY BEEN DISABLED].

“Howard Ahmanson, Jr.-CNP Member 1984-85, 1988, Board of Governors 1996, 1998. President of Fieldstead and Co.; Fieldstead Foundation; chair of the California Independent Business PAC. Ahmanson is and Orange County financier who inherited Home Savings of America from his father, has spent millions promotion Religious Right candidates, first in California and then nationwide. Ahmanson has been a major contributor to the Capitol Resource Institute, 6 the California political front of Focus on the Family; the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, the Reason Foundation, (an offshoot of Reason Public Policy Insitute (RPPI) and the California Pro-life Council Inc.

Ahmanson Helped found The Rutherford Institute and is a major donor to Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation; The Ahmanson Foundation was a contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (1990-1993) See David Rockefeller

A Board member for the Claremont Institute, wife, Roberta Green also member of Claremont Institute board. Newport Beach, CA.; Ahmanson also served 23 years (retired 1995) on the board of the Chalcedon Insitute in Vallecito, California, which Newsweek (February 2, 1981) accurately identified as the think tank of the Religious Right. The Chalcedon Institute, to which Ahmanson has contributed over a million dollars, was founded in 1965, perpetuates the Dominionist/Reconstructionist/Kindom Now beliefs of founder Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony who was also a member of the CNP. Rushdoony, who died February 8, 2001…”

CNP Board of Governors (1996). Member, Council for National Policy; major financial supporter and board member, Chalcedon; President of Fieldstead and Co.; Fieldstead Foundation; Board of Directors, Claremont Institute. Ahmanson is an Orange County financier who inherited Home Savings of America from his father, has spent millions (over $4 million) promoting far-right candidates, first in California and then nationwide.

Ahmanson served for more than 20 years on the board of the Chalcedon Institute in Vallecito, California, a think tank devoted to the teachings of its leader, the Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony (CNP). The 80-year-old Rushdoony is the father of a movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which holds that Christianity should hold dominion over all earthly affairs. [McMahon] Ahmanson helped found The Rutherford Institute and is a major donor to Free Congress Foundation; The Ahmanson Foundation was a contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), according to 1990-1993 Annual Reports.

The Fieldstead Institute helped to fund the book “Restorers of Hope”, written by Amy L. Sherman, which is a PR piece for Welfare Reform’s Charitable Choice [1996] which allows state/federal funding to flow into churches. In a radio interview Sherman said that Christians were involved in writing that section of the legislation. When asked in a phone interview who they were and she said Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Public Justice. The book doesn’t mention it, but Sherman works part time at the Rockefeller-funded Manhattan Institute for Public Policy [New York] which has cross-over people with both Brookings Institute and Hudson Institute [Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn]. The Manhattan Institute’ Center for Civic Innovation CCI is involved in Education Reform, Welfare Reform as well as the Jeremiah Project.””

34. Hunt & Ahmanson were both major contributors to the Chalcedon Foundation, Christian Reconstruction’s main think tank.  A Nation Under God Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful Christian Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of God right now? from the courthouse to the White House. Mother Jones JOHN SUGG DECEMBER 2005

35. The goal of Christian Reconstruction — also known as “Dominionism” — is to transform America into a theocracy by “dismantling” our current government and replacing it with a “social order based on biblical law.” Secrets of the extreme religious right: Inside the frightening world of Christian Reconstructionism Salon The zealots pushing a horrifying vision of “religious freedom” really have in mind a new biblical slavery PAUL ROSENBERG  JULY 31, 2015

Verified Voting [“Diebold acquired Global Election Systems (GES) in January 2002. GES was renamed Diebold Election Systems (DES), and Robert Urosevich, who had been President of GES, became the CEO of DES.”]

Kelly: This Omaha company shaped how America counts its election ballots Omaha World Herald By Michael Kelly May 9, 2016. [Bob Urosevich founded ES&S under the name “Data Mark Systems [1976],” received “an infusion of capital from .. California billionaire William Ahmanson,” and changed the company name to “American Information Systems,” which became “ES&S in 1997 after the acquisition of [BRC].” Bob’s brother “Todd is a vice president of ES&S.”]

39. ES&S even acquired Diebold/Premier in 2009, but the DOJ forced it to divest because the combined company accounted for more than 70% of U.S. voting equipment.

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40. “Dominion Voting” is the disturbing moniker of the Canadian company that acquired Diebold in 2010: after the DOJ forced ES&S to sell. Former Diebold e-voting unit settles Ohio lawsuit Premier Election Solutions will pay cash, equipment and discounts to settle suit over dropped votes in ’08 primary Computerworld By  August 12, 2010

41. Equally disturbing, Diebold got into the voting machine business with its 2002 acquisition of Global Election Systems, a company whose Senior VP (programmer Jeffrey Dean) was a convicted felon who had served time for sophisticated crimes involving “computer tampering”. CON JOB AT DIEBOLD SUBSIDIARY Wired December 13, 2003 [“According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that ‘involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.’”];

Democracy at Risk NY Times By PAUL KRUGMAN “Computer experts say that software at Diebold and other manufacturers is full of security flaws, which would easily allow an insider to rig an election. But the people at voting machine companies wouldn’t do that, would they? Let’s ask Jeffrey Dean, a programmer who was senior vice president of a voting machine company, Global Election Systems, before Diebold acquired it in 2002. Bev Harris, author of ”Black Box Voting” (www.blackboxvoting.com), told The A.P. that Mr. Dean, before taking that job, spent time in a Washington correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files”

BlackBoxVoting.org LEAKS September 2003 Diebold Memos

42. As reported in some (or all) of the above stories, Dean’s criminal past and relationship to Global/Diebold were discovered by election integrity advocate and “Black Box Voting” author Beverly Harris.

43. Here is a copy of the SEC filing (obtained by Harris) showing that Dean was Global’s largest shareholder in 2001.

44. Here is an excerpt from Dean’s sentencing document, also obtained by Beverly Harris.

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45. Diebold told the AP that Dean left the company in 2002. Black Box Voting“Diebold told The Associated Press that Dean left the company when they took over. Actually, Diebold was loaning money to Global Election Systems while Dean was its senior Vice President and a director, and after the buyout, Diebold retained Dean as a consultant”

46. But Harris obtained Dean’s court file, which included internal Diebold memos showing that Dean remained as a Diebold consultant. Black Box Voting pg 193 & 194 by Bev Harris, 2004 www.BlackBoxVoting.org:“From: Steve Moreland, 4 Feb 2002. “I am pleased to announce that effective today. John Elder will be assuming the role of General Manager of the Printed Products department of Diebold Election Systems, Inc. …Jeff Dean has elected to maintain his affiliation with the company in a consulting role, reporting to Pat Green. The Diebold Election Division management team greatly values Jeff’s contribution to this business and is looking forward to his continued expertise in this market place.” 

47. According to Wired, Dean “wrote & maintained…code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes.” Wired

48. According to the Guardian, Dean also programmed the GEMS central tabulator system, which counted one third of the votes in 37 states in 2004.The Guardian. “Stephenson also discovered that Jeffrey Dean, the senior programmer of the Diebold Gems central tabulator system counting a third of the votes in the Bush-Kerry election in 37 states, has a police record. He pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement involving sophisticated manipulation of computer accounting records.”

Wally O’Dell Bush “Rangers and Pioneers” Fundraising Scandal 2003

49. Machine Politics In the Digital Age NY Times By MELANIE WARNER When Diebold, Inc. acquired Global, Diebold’s CEO was a member of Bush’s Rangers & Pioneers, an elite group of loyalists who … raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race.” that

50. According to the NY Times, Diebold’s executives donated exclusively to the Republican party in 2003. ”IN mid-August, Walden W. O’Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. ”I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,” wrote Mr. O’Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio.

That is hardly unusual for Mr. O’Dell. A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush’s ”Rangers and Pioneers,” an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race.

But it is not the only way that Mr. O’Dell is involved in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country’s biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.

Judging from Federal Election Commission data, at least eight million people will cast their ballots using Diebold machines next November. That is 8 percent of the number of people who voted in 2000, and includes all voters in the states of Georgia and Maryland and those in various counties of California, Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Arizona and Kansas.This is not Diebold; this is Wally O’Dell personally,” said Thomas W. Swidarski, senior vice president for strategic development and global marketing at Diebold, who works closely with Mr. O’Dell.

In July, professors at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University analyzed the software code for the company’s touch-screen voting machines and concluded that there was ”no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline” and that ”cryptography, when used at all, is used incorrectly.”

Making matters worse, the software code for the machines was discovered in January by a Seattle-area writer on a publicly accessible Internet site. That the code was unprotected constitutes a significant security lapse by Diebold, said Aviel D. Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, co-author of the study of the code.

Mr. Swidarski said the code on the Internet site was outdated and was not now in use in machines.

About 15,000 internal Diebold e-mail messages also found their way to the Internet. Some referred to software patches installed on Diebold machines days before elections. Others indicated that the Microsoft Access database used in Diebold’s tabulation servers was not protected by passwords. Diebold, which says passwords are now installed on machines, is threatening legal action against anyone who posts the files or links to them, contending that the e-mail is copyrighted.

A recent report for the state of Maryland by SAIC, an engineering and research firm, has added to concerns about the security of Diebold’s systems. It recommended 17 steps that Maryland election officials could take to ensure better security when using Diebold’s machines.

The company seized upon this as evidence that its systems, if used properly, were secure. But the report’s overall assessment was not particularly upbeat. ”The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise,” SAIC wrote.

It has been a bumpy couple of months for Mr. O’Dell, 58, who is known as Wally and spent 33 years at Emerson Electric before joining what is now Diebold Election Systems. Associates say he was stunned by the reaction to his August letter and now regrets writing it. ”Wally’s going to take a lower profile on this stuff,” Mr. Swidarski said. But Mr. Swidarski did not indicate that Mr. O’Dell would put a halt to all of his political activities. Those have included attendance at a Bush fund-raiser in Cincinnati on Sept. 30 and a flight to Crawford, Tex., in August for a Pioneers and Rangers meeting attended by the president. Other Diebold executives have contributed to President Bush’s re-election campaign. According to data reported to the Federal Election Commission, 11 executives have added a total of $22,000 to the president’s campaign coffers this year. No money from Diebold or its executives has gone to Democratic presidential candidates this year.“

DIEBOLD UNLOADS BELEAGUERED VOTING MACHINE DIVISION Wired September 3, 2009 KIM ZETTER   

“The company announced Thursday that Premier Election Solutions, Diebold’s beleaguered voting machine division, has been acquired by Election Systems and Software (ES&S). ES&S purchased the company for a mere $5 million in cash, plus 70 percent of any revenue collected on outstanding accounts through the end of August. According to Diebold’s announcement the sale was “consummated” Wednesday.

Even before the sale, ES&S was already the nation’s largest voting machine maker. Present in 43 states, ES&S systems were “utilized in counting approximately 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections,” according to the company’s website. The company also created the statewide voter registration systems used in California, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and New Mexico…Diebold, an Ohio-based maker of ATMs and security systems, purchased its elections business from Global Election Systems in January 2002, just as Congress was passing the Help America Vote Act, which allocated billions to states to purchase new voting machines. Diebold Inc. CEO Walden O’Dell, a fundraiser for former President George Bush, wrote in a letter to Republican supporters that the company was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004.

The company also became a target of voting activists that year after it inadvertently released its source code on an FTP server, and computer scientists who examined it discovered numerous security problems with the system.

Criticism of the company and its machines remained constant as Diebold voting machines experienced numerous problems in election districts around the country, and incidents of company officials applying uncertified patches to machines were exposed. The most recent problem with the company’s system occurred in the 2008 presidential election in Humboldt County, California, when Diebold’s tabulation software randomly deleted nearly 200 votes. An examination of the system revealed that its audit logs failed to record significant events, such as someone deleting votes from the system; it also contained a delete button that allowed anyone with access to the system to erase the audit logs.”  

52. HAVA’s chief sponsor, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, received expensive bribes from Abramoff and defeated legislation that would have required voting machines to include a paper audit trail.

Ney Sentenced to 30 Months In Prison for Abramoff Deals Washington Post By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi January 20, 2007 [discussing bribes from Abramoff]

Help America Vote Act HAVA  Rep. Ney, Robert W. [R-OH-18] (Introduced 11/14/2001) [identifying Ney as chief sponsor of HAVA]

EIR LaRouche 2004 [Letter from Ney opposing paper audit trail and using people with disabilities as a scapegoat]

Ex-Ohio Rep. Ney sentenced to 30 months – sentence was harsher than rec. by prosecutors Democratic Underground [discussing how Ney defeated a subsequent paper audit trail bill as well]

53. At the time, Diebold’s machines were paperless, and Diebold had paid Abramoff’s firm at least $275,000 to lobby for its machines. [Describing Diebold as “among the country’s biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.”NYTimes]

[Diebold paid the lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig at least $275,000 An Excerpt From “How to Rig an Election” Harper’s October 22, 2012 By Victoria Collier]”

Editor’s Note: The full text of “How to Rig an Election” is now available to all readers for free here.

Thread continues on Jack Abramoff  and then goes to   Voting Machine Issues