Electronic Voting and the Deep State
When looking at systemic election fraud, an interesting question is when it all began. Obviously, we've had election fraud for as long as this nation existed, but it could never be executed on a national level until computers took over the vote counting process. Since 2000, there's been a nationwide vote shift to Republican candidates, as well as fraudulent primaries (2008 Dem, 2012 Rep, and 2016 Dem) to ensure the corporate candidate won. But did fraud start then, or did people just start paying attention?
Quite often, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 is described as the turning point. The law mandated states modernize their voting systems after the disastrous 2000 election, adopting electronic voting systems (optical scanners and DREs) and voter registration databases. All of this made elections much easier to tamper with on a wide scale.
Yet HAVA only accelerated what had been going on for a long time. The groundwork for fraud was laid back in the 1960s, when punch card voting came into prominence and a private media consortium took over reporting the results. In the 1970s and 80s, Dallas and Omaha powerbrokers began consolidating the elections industry. In the 1990s and early 2000s, financial criminals from Vancouver and Seattle steered Global Election Systems (later Diebold) to a dominant position.
The introduction of electronic voting is a national coup decades in the making. It has numerous ties to convicted criminals, mob organizations, wealthy powerbrokers, military/defense contractors, and the CIA. Sound like a crazed conspiracy theory? Everything I'm about to share can be easily verified.
JFK assassination and "the roots of vote fraud"
One of the first investigations into election fraud was Jim and Ken Collier's book Votescam. The two brothers stumbled onto the issue all the way back in 1970, when Ken decided to run for office in Miami against incumbent Democratic congressman Claude Pepper. Originally intending to write a book about the experience of running for office, they found themselves investigating the shadowy world of media consortiums, state election officials, and private election contractors.
On election night, Ken got as high as 31% of the vote before the election computer "broke down". The local news outlets fell back to broadcasting their "projections" of the vote count instead. Ken's count dropped back down to 16%, where it remained for the rest of the night. Shockingly, these projections, based off the vote totals of only one machine, matched the final results with almost perfect accuracy. When Jim and Ken went to the professor who did the projections for Channel 7 to ask how he managed that feat, he told them "You'll never prove it. Now, get out".
Jim and Ken set out on a decades-long investigation of vote tampering that took them across the US. They found evidence of forged election records, rigged lever machines, interest groups like the League of Women Voters tampering with punch cards (which they videotaped), suspicious media activities, and private election companies like Computer Election Systems (CES), Fidlar, and Triad.
The role of the media was particularly troubling. When Ken first ran for office in 1970, the official results were virtually identical to the media projections. The conclusion drawn by the Collier brothers was that the media predetermined the election results, which ultimately became official.
As they dug further, the Collier brothers uncovered the existence of a media consortium that had taken control of reporting election results. At the time, there was no World Wide Web for Secretaries of State to report election results in real time. News Election Services (NES), founded in 1964, had the sole responsibility to collect vote tallies from individual counties and report them to the nation. NES was a collaboration between ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, AP, and newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times.
This media consortium had the ability to report any results they wanted and have the public accept them as fact. If necessary, they could also collude with the local officials and private contractors to make the official results match. Practically nobody would be able to expose this scheme even if caught, because NES were the media. The Collier brothers caught this in their 1970 race, and many others in the following decades. But any attempt to dig into the NES would be met by stonewalling and "This is not a proper area of inquiry".
When Ken Collier appeared on a radio show to discuss the Votescam investigation, conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell called in and told him "the roots of vote fraud were to be found in Dallas". After JFK was shot in 1963, she theorized that the CIA and media did a trade-off, with the media covering up the Warren Commission's inconsistencies in exchange for control of the vote count.
Indeed, NES was founded in 1964, only a year after JFK's assassination. Then a year later, in 1965, the first major computerized voting system - a punch card system - came to prominence. After JFK's murder, a corrupt media consortium took control of election reporting and computers were first introduced into US elections. If Mae Brussell's theory is correct, it seems that the CIA got right to work solidifying their control over the democratic process immediately after killing JFK in 1963. Her theory also makes sense in the context of Operation Mockingbird, a CIA media control program.
NES later merged with an exit polling consortium, Voter Research and Survey (VRS), to form the Voter News Service (VNS) into 1990. In 2000, Victoria Collier (daughter of Jim Collier) interviewed Bill Headline, executive director of VNS. He sounded shockingly nervous, and hung up when Victoria expressed her distrust in the mainstream media. Headline turns out to have been in Naval Intelligence from 1955 to 1957 before joining CBS and rising through the media ranks. This offers further reason to believe there was CIA influence over the media and VNS.
For some time, the Voter News Service computers were located in the World Trade Center. From July 1, 1999 to November 30, 2000, the VNS had leased space on the 93rd floor of WTC2. Luckily, they had the good sense to let their lease expire less than a year before the 9/11 attacks.
BRC: Hunt family roots
Mae Brussell might have been unknowingly prophetic when she said the roots of vote fraud were to be found in Dallas. During the 1980s, a cadre of Dallas powerbrokers entered the elections industry, the most powerful being an heiress to the Hunt family.
H.L. Hunt was an immensely wealthy Texas oilman and conservative activist. Keeping Brussell's meaning of a Dallas connection in mind, some have even implicated him in the JFK assassination. As a member of the radical-right and anti-communist John Birch Society, Hunt despised Kennedy. His son, Nelson Bunker Hunt, funded an anti-JFK ad for the day he entered Dallas, accusing him of aiding communists:
Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ's alleged illicit lover, claimed that Texas oilmen like H.L. Hunt and LBJ conspired to murder JFK. Sam Giancana, a Mafia leader who worked with the CIA in its anti-Castro assassination program, also said that oil tycoons including Hunt funded the assassination.
Regardless of whether the Hunt family was involved with the JFK assassination, it was undeniably powerful, both financially and politically. That same influence was retained by Hunt's heirs. Nelson Bunker Hunt, in 1981, was a founding member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive religious right organization forming a political strategization network of conservative power players. Its past and current members include Oliver North (Iran-Contra conspirator), key insiders in Trump's administration, and a couple election fraud-related names we'll see later.
Caroline Rose Hunt, daughter of H.L. Hunt, parlayed her family fortune into the Dallas business community. Her business holdings were owned under the Rosewood Corporation, and included oil and gas properties as well as a luxury hotel business. Also owned by Caroline Hunt was the investment firm Rosewood Financial Partners.
The Collier brothers witnessed the beginning of private companies running elections. But up to the 1980s, the network of election vendors and contractors was still diverse and regional. That was about to change thanks to a dominant Dallas elections company: Business Records Corporation.
Business Records Corporation (BRC) was a major provider of elections supplies (such as voting equipment and ballots) in the late-20th century. It was a subsidiary of Cronus Industries. From 1984 to 1986, BRC went on an acquisition spree, buying up other elections companies from all over the US. In 1985, Cronus purchased Computer Election Systems Inc. (CESI), the largest US voting technology company (and one of the firms mentioned in Votescam), and integrated it with BRC. By 1986, Cronus had sold its other subsidiaries and opted just to focus on BRC.
Cronus Industries, in turn, was owned by numerous Dallas powerbrokers. Among them were Rosewood Financial Partners (Caroline Hunt's firm), with a 6% stake, and two other companies tied to the Hunts (Buttonwood Capital and L.D. Brinkman), with 7.3% and 5.32% stakes. That means nearly 20% of Cronus was owned by Hunt or former business associates of hers. Several other Dallas investment firms were also owners, including a partner of Rothschild Inc.
This consortium of Dallas powerbrokers, many of whom had deep ties to conservative activism and the religious right, began consolidating the US elections ecosystem from an assortment of locally-owned companies to a centrally-controlled industry. Did they have sinister motives in doing so? We can't say, but the conflicts of interest are disturbing, and centralizing control of elections into a small number of private corporations would indeed make it much easier to control US elections nationwide.
ES&S and its big Omaha players
In Omaha NE, another major elections company was rapidly growing. The company began with Bob Urosevich, an Omaha resident who worked at the ballot printing company for Douglas County NE.
At the time, Douglas County was one of the largest locales still hand-counting its ballots. In 1974, Urosevich, who remembered taking Scantron tests, wondered if the same kind of system could be used for counting votes. He approached Westinghouse Learning Corporation in Iowa City to test out his idea. In 1975, Urosevich gave a demonstration to Mike Boyle, election commissioner for Douglas County. Boyle was impressed, and Urosevich convinced the county to use it in the 1976 primary.
Following its success in the primary, Urosevich founded Data Mark Systems as a seller of Westinghouse ballot tabulators. Based in Omaha, it received the contract to count votes in the Douglas County general election, and marketed its product to other Nebraska counties as well. In 1978, Bob Urosevich hired his brother Todd, a former IBM salesman. In 1979, after Westinghouse pulled out of the industry, Data Mark hired some of their employees and was renamed to American Information Systems (AIS).
The Ahmansons invest
AIS originally epitomized the small, local election vendor that was prevalent before the 1980s. But at the turn of the decade, it started attracting interest from some very high-level financial and political interests.
William and Robert Ahmanson, savings-and-loan industry millionaires in California, poured capital into AIS in 1979. Their decision to invest apparently come about from the Ahmansons' friendship with the Urosevich family. A friendship between the Urosevich family and these S&L millionaires is quite interesting, since it suggests that the Urosevich family might have been quite well-connected.
As Bev Harris notes, the Ahmanson brothers were older cousins of Howard Ahmanson Jr., a Christian Reconstructionist who used his fortune to fund extreme right-wing politics. Howard Ahmanson Jr. was a member of the Council for National Policy from 1984-85 and in 1988. Recall that Nelson Bunker Hunt, whose sister Caroline had a substantial interest in another voting machine company, initially founded the CNP.
In 1987, the Ahmansons sold their AIS shares to the Omaha World-Herald, the state's largest newspaper (which got a 45% stake), and the McCarthy Group, an Omaha investment bank (which got 35%).
Omaha World-Herald
The Omaha World-Herald was a very influential newspaper in the US. Its publisher and CEO, Harold Andersen, ran in elite circles at the national level. From 1972 to 1975, he served on the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In 1987, he became a board member for the Williams Companies (later implicated in manufacturing the 2000 CA energy crisis). Andersen was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a New York foreign policy think-tank full of neoconservatives.
Andersen and the Omaha World-Herald are also implicated in something much darker: the Franklin scandal. The Franklin scandal concerned an Omaha-based child sex trafficking ring that pandered children to political and business elites. Run by Republican rising star Lawrence E. King, using his Franklin Credit Union as a front (hence the name), it provided children to elites in Omaha and also flew them across the US, including to Washington DC. Larry King's child sex ring was linked to the CIA, particularly through CIA asset Craig Spence, and was used for blackmail purposes.
In Omaha, King frequently threw parties with local elites in which these children were provided for sex. One of the people implicated at these child sex parties was Harold Andersen. Andersen was also a financial backer of King's, lavishly funding the Franklin Credit Union and sitting on its advisory board. Another World-Herald columnist implicated at King's parties was Peter Citron. The Omaha World-Herald praised King's good, charitable work at the credit union as he embezzled nearly $40 million from it.
When the Franklin scandal began breaking in 1988, the Omaha World-Herald vehemently attacked the allegations of a child sex ring. The existence of the pedophile ring was dismissed as lunatic conspiracy theory, and the children accusing King were smeared as liars. Andersen stepped down as publisher and CEO in 1989, but the cover-up by the World-Herald continued. Rather than calling for a proper investigation, it called for the victims to be prosecuted for perjury, which ultimately happened.
Morally, it is unconscionable to have a newspaper run by sadistic child abusers and their defenders owning a voting machine company. Politically, it's very likely that the people running the Omaha World-Herald are compromised or controlled by the CIA, which is another big conflict of interest.
Given the Omaha World-Herald's cover-up of the CIA-run child sex ring, and Andersen's multitude of national political connections (to the Fed, major corporations, and the CFR), it's quite plausible that Andersen himself was a CIA asset, used for media control under Operation Mockingbird. (The CIA allegedly ended the operation in the 1970s, but they also claimed to have ended Project MKUltra around that time, and some Franklin victims reported their abuse was for MKUltra-like experiments.)
McCarthy Group
What about the other owner of AIS, the McCarthy Group? Its role is even more mysterious than that of the Omaha World-Herald.
Started in 1986, the McCarthy Group is an Omaha investment bank founded by Michael McCarthy. Somehow, only a year after its founding, the McCarthy Group was able to acquire a 35% stake in AIS from the millionaire Ahmansons.
Very little is known about Mike McCarthy or the McCarthy Group. It is known that McCarthy has served on several corporate boards in Omaha, including Peter Kiewit Sons' (since 2001) and Union Pacific Corporation (since 2008). Executives from both of these Omaha corporations were implicated in Franklin as well.
The McCarthy Group also has a close relationship with the Omaha World-Herald. John Gottschalk, president of the World-Herald in 1986 and publisher after Andersen stepped down in 1989, was a good friend of Michael McCarthy. At some point between 1986 (the Group's founding) and 2002 (when Bev Harris discovered this), a World-Herald subsidiary called World Investments actually acquired the McCarthy Group. How long this relationship lasted is unclear, but John Gottschalk is still on the McCarthy Group board to this very day.
Ultimately, two closely-linked Omaha companies, one of which had CIA connections, shared ownership of AIS.
Chuck Hagel's connection
A big name in national politics worked at both the McCarthy Group and AIS: Chuck Hagel. Hagel was born in Omaha, but moved to DC in the 1980s to get involved with Republican politics. After a brief stint as Deputy VA Administrator under Reagan, Hagel became a businessman in the DC area. He founded Vanguard Cellular in 1982, making him a multi-millionaire. Hagel also became president and CEO of the World USO and Private Sector Council, directed the 1990 G7 summit, and sat on the boards of several NGOs.
In 1988, John Gottschalk (who knew Hagel through their mutual membership in the World USO) invited Hagel and Michael McCarthy on a fishing trip in Wyoming. The two became friends, and Hagel moved to Omaha in 1992 to serve as president of McCarthy's investment bank and chairman of AIS.
Hagel served on the McCarthy Group and AIS from 1992 to 1995. He was recognized in his biography as rescuing AIS from financial insolvency. After Bob Urosevich left the company in late 1993, Hagel replaced him as CEO.
By 1995, Hagel decided to run for a Nebraska Senate seat. He resigned from the McCarthy Group and AIS that year before entering the race. However, he neglected to disclose his positions at AIS on the Senate candidacy disclosure forms, nor did he report a continuing $1-5 million investment in AIS that he had transferred to the McCarthy Group. This ethical violation hid the fact that Hagel had very recently run a company making the machines that would count the votes in his Senate race.
His Democratic opponent was popular Democratic governor Ben Nelson. Hagel, a political newcomer who had only recently moved back to Nebraska, trailed in the polls behind Nelson throughout 1996. While he did gain momentum as November approached, the very closest poll (taken by the Omaha World-Herald a couple days before the election) showed a tied race. On election day, Hagel officially won a landslide victory of 14%.
This shocking upset attracted nationwide attention. But thanks to Hagel's unethical decision not to disclose his position at AIS, few people knew of his conflict of interest with the company counting his Senate votes. Together, these aspects raise suspicion that Hagel's election victory was stolen. My statistical analysis of Douglas County NE found evidence of tampering in that 1996 election.
Hagel ultimately rose very high in DC political circles. He attended the infamous Bilderberg Group meetings in 1999 and 2000. When a Republican ethics committee chair looked into Hagel's dishonest filings about AIS and the McCarthy Group, he was strong-armed into resigning. It looked to many political observers like Hagel was being groomed as a presidential candidate in 2008. That run never materialized, but Hagel did become Defense Secretary under Obama and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations today.
In Hagel's move back to Omaha in the 1990s, we can see him being pulled into this network of Omaha powerbrokers that controlled AIS. He was also the beneficiary, if not the orchestrator, of a rigged Senate election. And he rose to national political prominence, even joining elite groups like Bilderberg and CFR.
Merging with BRC
By 1997, BRC (run by Dallas powerbrokers) and AIS (run by Omaha powerbrokers) decided to merge. Strangely, despite BRC having a larger presence throughout the US, it was AIS who acquired them. The Justice Department halted the merger on antitrust grounds, leading to an arrangement where BRC transferred the Optech line to Sequoia (more on them below). The new company was Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
With this move, wealthy elites consolidated their control over the election process even further.
Global Election Systems: fraudsters and felons
In 1983, as BRC began its acquisition blitz and AIS was still in its early years, Clinton H. Rickards founded North American Professional Technologies (NAPT), a Vancouver technology company. One of NAPT's first projects, begun in 1986, was developing an electronic voting system. They partnered with Unisys Corporation in the US, which acquired a patent for a voting system based on one of BRC's optical scanners. NAPT's new voting system was initially called the ES-200; later, it got the name AccuVote.
Unfortunately for NAPT, it would attract a bevy of financial criminals. All of these financial criminals would compromise the integrity of the company and raise suspicion that it had been converted into a criminal enterprise.
Macrotrends crooks
Developing a voting system was expensive, forcing NAPT to seek funds from Macrotrends International Ventures Inc., a venture capital firm based in Vancouver. By 1989, when the ES-200 was completed, NAPT had become a subsidiary of Macrotrends. Getting funding from Macrotrends may have kept NAPT afloat, but it put them under the influence of some very unsavory folks.
Norton Cooper, who marketed Macrotrends and its companies, had been jailed in 1974 for defrauding the Canadian government. During the 1980s, he sold so many fraudulent stock deals through Macrotrends that the Vancouver Stock Exchange (VSE) ordered Macrotrends to fire him in 1989. Cooper's stock fraud led to Forbes labeling the VSE as the "Scam Capital of the World".
Charles Hong Lee, a director of Macrotrends and NAPT, was a childhood friend of Cooper and was involved in some of his fraudulent ventures. When he and Cooper were sued in 1989 by investors in a Macrotrends venture, Lee failed to answer the lawsuit. He was ultimately ordered to pay over $500,000 in restitution.
In 1994, Lee defrauded Chinese immigrants out of more than $600,000 along with his business partner Michael K. Graye. Michael K. Graye, from 1987 to 1991, stole up to $18 million from four corporations, and was arrested in 1996 for tax fraud and money laundering. To make bail, a Hong Kong shell company sold "real estate" and got $300,000 from investors. Graye was simultaneously indicted on stock fraud charges for Vinex Wines, a US company he ran with Lee.
NAPT ended its relationship with Unisys in 1991, merging with Macrotrends to form Global Election Systems. Global bought the rights to the patent Unisys had owned and got into the elections industry on its own. The programming office was in Vancouver, while the executive offices and manufacturing body were headquartered in McKinney TX. All three crooks (particularly Graye) were part of Global Election Systems for a short time after its 1991 founding, but left within a couple years.
Michael K. Graye's business ventures were tied to a Mafia-linked penny stock promoter. That implies that Charles Hong Lee, Graye's business partner, could have had mob connections as well, including (given his status as a Chinese immigrant) to the Hong Kong Triad in Vancouver. The Triad engages in activities such as drug smuggling and human trafficking (a second possible connection between sex trafficking and election fraud).
Norton Cooper, who marketed Macrotrends and its companies, had been jailed in 1974 for defrauding the Canadian government. During the 1980s, he sold so many fraudulent stock deals through Macrotrends that the Vancouver Stock Exchange (VSE) ordered Macrotrends to fire him in 1989. Cooper's stock fraud led to Forbes labeling the VSE as the "Scam Capital of the World".
Charles Hong Lee, a director of Macrotrends and NAPT, was a childhood friend of Cooper and was involved in some of his fraudulent ventures. When he and Cooper were sued in 1989 by investors in a Macrotrends venture, Lee failed to answer the lawsuit. He was ultimately ordered to pay over $500,000 in restitution.
In 1994, Lee defrauded Chinese immigrants out of more than $600,000 along with his business partner Michael K. Graye. Michael K. Graye, from 1987 to 1991, stole up to $18 million from four corporations, and was arrested in 1996 for tax fraud and money laundering. To make bail, a Hong Kong shell company sold "real estate" and got $300,000 from investors. Graye was simultaneously indicted on stock fraud charges for Vinex Wines, a US company he ran with Lee.
NAPT ended its relationship with Unisys in 1991, merging with Macrotrends to form Global Election Systems. Global bought the rights to the patent Unisys had owned and got into the elections industry on its own. The programming office was in Vancouver, while the executive offices and manufacturing body were headquartered in McKinney TX. All three crooks (particularly Graye) were part of Global Election Systems for a short time after its 1991 founding, but left within a couple years.
Michael K. Graye's business ventures were tied to a Mafia-linked penny stock promoter. That implies that Charles Hong Lee, Graye's business partner, could have had mob connections as well, including (given his status as a Chinese immigrant) to the Hong Kong Triad in Vancouver. The Triad engages in activities such as drug smuggling and human trafficking (a second possible connection between sex trafficking and election fraud).
Hiring in their own image
How much does it matter if financial crooks were owners and directors of Global? Does it compromise the integrity of the entire company? Not necessarily, but Bev Harris points out that people running a company tend to hire in their own image. Did that happen for Global?
Talbot Iredale was one of the original voting machine developers at NAPT during the late 80s. While writing touchscreen software patches for the 2002 Georgia election, he explicitly said that he didn't want Wyle Labs (the outside certifier) to review the patches. In other words, Iredale wanted to put code onto voting machines in a live election that wasn't looked over by anyone else. I sure wonder why that is. That 2002 Georgia election featured multiple shocking Republican upsets.
In the 2003 California primary, a live election database from San Luis Obispo County somehow found its way onto the Global FTP server. County clerk Julie Rodewald said that neither she nor anyone on her staff uploaded the file. A password on the ZIP file containing the database gave a clue who did: "Sophia". Sophia Lee was a Global technician who, according to Rodewald, was in the county on election day (though she denied giving Sophia tabulator access). Might she have been related to Charles Hong Lee? Both of them reported coming from Hong Kong.
Though it's only two examples, Global's employees have a history of strange activities with voting system code and election data.
Talbot Iredale was one of the original voting machine developers at NAPT during the late 80s. While writing touchscreen software patches for the 2002 Georgia election, he explicitly said that he didn't want Wyle Labs (the outside certifier) to review the patches. In other words, Iredale wanted to put code onto voting machines in a live election that wasn't looked over by anyone else. I sure wonder why that is. That 2002 Georgia election featured multiple shocking Republican upsets.
In the 2003 California primary, a live election database from San Luis Obispo County somehow found its way onto the Global FTP server. County clerk Julie Rodewald said that neither she nor anyone on her staff uploaded the file. A password on the ZIP file containing the database gave a clue who did: "Sophia". Sophia Lee was a Global technician who, according to Rodewald, was in the county on election day (though she denied giving Sophia tabulator access). Might she have been related to Charles Hong Lee? Both of them reported coming from Hong Kong.
Though it's only two examples, Global's employees have a history of strange activities with voting system code and election data.
Urosevich joins the company
A pattern that emerges in the elections industry is the constant swapping of subsidiaries, products, and staff between companies. It appears like a constant attempt to evade antitrust actions, while keeping the voting machine business centralized among a few key players.
Bob Urosevich, the founder and CEO of AIS in Omaha, left the company in 1993. He started a new voting machine company, I-Mark Systems, in 1995. I-Mark's goal was developing a touchscreen voting system, and to that end, it built a few prototypes. In 1997 (the same year ES&S was formed from AIS and BRC), Global Election Systems acquired I-Mark. Urosevich became a board member and executive at Global. I-Mark's touchscreen would become the AccuVote TSx, for which Talbot Iredale wrote his secret patches.
Bob Urosevich, the founder and CEO of AIS in Omaha, left the company in 1993. He started a new voting machine company, I-Mark Systems, in 1995. I-Mark's goal was developing a touchscreen voting system, and to that end, it built a few prototypes. In 1997 (the same year ES&S was formed from AIS and BRC), Global Election Systems acquired I-Mark. Urosevich became a board member and executive at Global. I-Mark's touchscreen would become the AccuVote TSx, for which Talbot Iredale wrote his secret patches.
Bob Urosevich showing off the AccuVote TSx
Jeffrey Dean
At the turn of the 21st century, another financial crook attained a very high position at Global: embezzler Jeffrey Dean. Dean brought along with him cocaine trafficker John Elder.
(Sources about Dean: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Dean was an engineer living in Seattle. He worked at Boeing before founding his own consulting company. In 1982, Dean's consulting company was hired by the politically-connected Culp, Guterson & Grader law firm to program their accounting system. CG&G later discovered that Dean had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the firm. Dean took an Alford plea (not admitting guilt) in 1989, was sentenced to prison, and was ordered to pay restitution to CG&G.
Interestingly, Dean maintains that he was a fall guy for a scheme involving other partners of CG&G. He claimed that other CG&G partners would take money out of the firm, invest it, and reap the profits while returning the original amount to the firm. Dean said he assisted them in this scheme, but when the investments went awry, he became the one who took the fall.
Whether Dean is telling the truth is unclear. He's clearly a fraud and a liar, and his original story to Seattle police was that he stole the money to pay blackmail over a fight in which somebody died. However, Dean's incredible rise to success after the embezzlement sentence implies that high-level political players (like those at CG&G) were supporting and protecting him. So the idea that Dean took the fall does carry some weight.
One partner at CG&G was Egil Krogh, head of the White House Plumbers under Nixon. After Krogh was jailed and disbarred for Watergate-related crimes, William Dwyer of CG&G represented Krogh in the fight to reinstate his law license and hired him. The Plumbers consisted of CIA agents like E. Howard Hunt, who led the CIA's anti-Castro assassination efforts and was allegedly linked to the JFK assassination. Krogh himself was fingered for CIA drug trafficking by Charles Colson and John Dean.
While Dean was in prison, his brother Neil Dean started PSI Group. PSI Group got the contract from King County WA to develop the county's absentee ballot processing system. Jeffrey Dean, along with cocaine trafficker John Elder (who he met in prison), worked on King County's absentee voting system while still in prison on a work-release program.
Dean was released from prison in 1995. A month before he did, CG&G split up. He joined the company that his wife Deborah founded while he was in prison, Spectrum Print & Mail. Spectrum initially did newspaper deliveries, but soon after Dean's release, it got into ballot printing. Leaving prison with only $87 in his inmate account, Dean and his wife obtained over $1 million to fly to Belgium, buy two expensive high-end printers, and bankroll a ballot printing operation at Spectrum.
Spectrum almost immediately got the lucrative contract to print ballots for King County. Strangely, none of the former CG&G partners nudged their friends in King County government to tell them they were employing a crook who had stolen half a million dollars from their law firm. After John Elder's release in 1996, Dean hired him to Spectrum.
The involvement of Dean in King County's elections also brought him in contact with Global Election Systems. Global began providing voting systems to King County in the late 90s. Spectrum began developing absentee ballot processing software called VoteRemote that interfaced with GEMS. Dean, who worked inside the King County elections office, got a key and 24/7 access to the county GEMS tabulator.
His ballot printing plant at Spectrum attracted Global's interest. In 2000, Global acquired Spectrum for $4 million, making Dean the largest stockholder in Global and earning him a spot on the board of directors. According to Global emails, Dean supervised several projects, including the GEMS tabulator software and the AccuVote TSx. He worked closely with Peter Martin, who programmed the high-speed optical scanner.
Dean held his position at Global until 2002, when it was bought by Diebold to become Diebold Election Systems. After Diebold's acquisition, Dean briefly stayed on as a consultant.
Diebold claimed that Dean had no further involvement with the company after that. But there were some indications of that not being true. When asked in a 2003 court case to disclose all past, current, and future payments from Diebold, Dean and his wife purposefully omitted "current" and "future" answers. They, did, however, reveal strange payments going back several years from a Canadian shell company called Spectrum Digital. Some Diebold insiders told Bev Harris that Dean was still involved with the company.
Ultimately, we see the following: an embezzler who stole money from a politically-connected Seattle law firm (that employed a Watergate figure/possible CIA drug trafficker) was protected and steered along to a high-level position in US elections, obtaining contracts worth millions of dollars. This embezzler supervised the production of absentee processing, opscan, touchscreen, and central tabulator software still used today across the US. And he might still have a secret involvement with the voting machine vendor.
(Sources about Dean: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Dean was an engineer living in Seattle. He worked at Boeing before founding his own consulting company. In 1982, Dean's consulting company was hired by the politically-connected Culp, Guterson & Grader law firm to program their accounting system. CG&G later discovered that Dean had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the firm. Dean took an Alford plea (not admitting guilt) in 1989, was sentenced to prison, and was ordered to pay restitution to CG&G.
Interestingly, Dean maintains that he was a fall guy for a scheme involving other partners of CG&G. He claimed that other CG&G partners would take money out of the firm, invest it, and reap the profits while returning the original amount to the firm. Dean said he assisted them in this scheme, but when the investments went awry, he became the one who took the fall.
Whether Dean is telling the truth is unclear. He's clearly a fraud and a liar, and his original story to Seattle police was that he stole the money to pay blackmail over a fight in which somebody died. However, Dean's incredible rise to success after the embezzlement sentence implies that high-level political players (like those at CG&G) were supporting and protecting him. So the idea that Dean took the fall does carry some weight.
One partner at CG&G was Egil Krogh, head of the White House Plumbers under Nixon. After Krogh was jailed and disbarred for Watergate-related crimes, William Dwyer of CG&G represented Krogh in the fight to reinstate his law license and hired him. The Plumbers consisted of CIA agents like E. Howard Hunt, who led the CIA's anti-Castro assassination efforts and was allegedly linked to the JFK assassination. Krogh himself was fingered for CIA drug trafficking by Charles Colson and John Dean.
Egil Krogh, head of the Plumbers under Nixon and alleged CIA operative
While Dean was in prison, his brother Neil Dean started PSI Group. PSI Group got the contract from King County WA to develop the county's absentee ballot processing system. Jeffrey Dean, along with cocaine trafficker John Elder (who he met in prison), worked on King County's absentee voting system while still in prison on a work-release program.
Dean was released from prison in 1995. A month before he did, CG&G split up. He joined the company that his wife Deborah founded while he was in prison, Spectrum Print & Mail. Spectrum initially did newspaper deliveries, but soon after Dean's release, it got into ballot printing. Leaving prison with only $87 in his inmate account, Dean and his wife obtained over $1 million to fly to Belgium, buy two expensive high-end printers, and bankroll a ballot printing operation at Spectrum.
Spectrum almost immediately got the lucrative contract to print ballots for King County. Strangely, none of the former CG&G partners nudged their friends in King County government to tell them they were employing a crook who had stolen half a million dollars from their law firm. After John Elder's release in 1996, Dean hired him to Spectrum.
The involvement of Dean in King County's elections also brought him in contact with Global Election Systems. Global began providing voting systems to King County in the late 90s. Spectrum began developing absentee ballot processing software called VoteRemote that interfaced with GEMS. Dean, who worked inside the King County elections office, got a key and 24/7 access to the county GEMS tabulator.
His ballot printing plant at Spectrum attracted Global's interest. In 2000, Global acquired Spectrum for $4 million, making Dean the largest stockholder in Global and earning him a spot on the board of directors. According to Global emails, Dean supervised several projects, including the GEMS tabulator software and the AccuVote TSx. He worked closely with Peter Martin, who programmed the high-speed optical scanner.
Dean held his position at Global until 2002, when it was bought by Diebold to become Diebold Election Systems. After Diebold's acquisition, Dean briefly stayed on as a consultant.
Diebold claimed that Dean had no further involvement with the company after that. But there were some indications of that not being true. When asked in a 2003 court case to disclose all past, current, and future payments from Diebold, Dean and his wife purposefully omitted "current" and "future" answers. They, did, however, reveal strange payments going back several years from a Canadian shell company called Spectrum Digital. Some Diebold insiders told Bev Harris that Dean was still involved with the company.
Ultimately, we see the following: an embezzler who stole money from a politically-connected Seattle law firm (that employed a Watergate figure/possible CIA drug trafficker) was protected and steered along to a high-level position in US elections, obtaining contracts worth millions of dollars. This embezzler supervised the production of absentee processing, opscan, touchscreen, and central tabulator software still used today across the US. And he might still have a secret involvement with the voting machine vendor.
Fraud-enabling GEMS features
What did Jeffrey Dean specifically do at Global? Aside from being a director, he was Vice President of Research and Development. Under his supervision, two features facilitating election fraud were added to the GEMS tabulator.
The first was a double set of books. GEMS has two types of election reports: the countywide totals (Election Summary) and precinct-by-precinct counts (Statement of Votes Cast). Both reports, though, should ultimately pull from the same vote data. Originally, that's what GEMS did. Then Dean joined Global in September 2000, and the October 2000 release of GEMS had each report pull from a different data table. This would allow an election rigger to manipulate the countywide totals, while leaving the precinct totals (used for canvasses and hand-count audits) alone.
No legitimate reason exists for this feature to be in GEMS. Furthermore, the books are kept synchronized unless someone enters a hidden code in a specific part of the GEMS database. The books also resynchronize any time that the double books are at risk of being discovered. This is clearly meant as an intentional election stealing feature. How convenient for it to show up in GEMS only a month after Jeffrey Dean got the job of supervising the features going into Global's products.
The second suspicious feature was fractional vote counts. Most people are familiar with the idea of 1-person, 1-vote, so it doesn't make sense to store votes as anything other than a whole number. But under Jeffrey Dean's supervision in 2001, GEMS added "weighted races", which allow votes to be stored as decimal values. Fractional vote counts allow for election results to be precisely reweighted to whatever percentages somebody wants. Black Box Voting developed a prototype utility to show how easily it could be done.
Fractional vote counts were supposedly meant for a homeowners association election in Sacramento. But there's no evidence that this election used fractional vote counts; Bev Harris found that California law called for whole numbers, not decimals, to be used in weighted races. Even if it did, that doesn't justify using fractional vote counts in every single GEMS election across the country. Nor does it explain why Global/Diebold initially documented weighted races in their manual, then removed it while keeping the fractional counts in.
Oddly enough, one day after Global emailed employees about adding weighted races, Diebold announced its intent to acquire Global. This intervention by Diebold rescued Global from insolvency and helped ensure Dean had enough money to pay for his CG&G restitution.
What's also interesting is that both fraud features added under Dean's supervision - double books and fractional counts - are reminiscent of accounting fraud. "Two sets of books" is a widely-known accounting fraud technique, and fractional vote counts is essentially counting votes as money. It seems like the embezzler, who stole from CG&G with a computerized accounting system, intended to allow vote embezzlement on GEMS.
The first was a double set of books. GEMS has two types of election reports: the countywide totals (Election Summary) and precinct-by-precinct counts (Statement of Votes Cast). Both reports, though, should ultimately pull from the same vote data. Originally, that's what GEMS did. Then Dean joined Global in September 2000, and the October 2000 release of GEMS had each report pull from a different data table. This would allow an election rigger to manipulate the countywide totals, while leaving the precinct totals (used for canvasses and hand-count audits) alone.
No legitimate reason exists for this feature to be in GEMS. Furthermore, the books are kept synchronized unless someone enters a hidden code in a specific part of the GEMS database. The books also resynchronize any time that the double books are at risk of being discovered. This is clearly meant as an intentional election stealing feature. How convenient for it to show up in GEMS only a month after Jeffrey Dean got the job of supervising the features going into Global's products.
The part of the GEMS database where the secret code can be entered ("Dirty" column)
The second suspicious feature was fractional vote counts. Most people are familiar with the idea of 1-person, 1-vote, so it doesn't make sense to store votes as anything other than a whole number. But under Jeffrey Dean's supervision in 2001, GEMS added "weighted races", which allow votes to be stored as decimal values. Fractional vote counts allow for election results to be precisely reweighted to whatever percentages somebody wants. Black Box Voting developed a prototype utility to show how easily it could be done.
Fractional vote counts were supposedly meant for a homeowners association election in Sacramento. But there's no evidence that this election used fractional vote counts; Bev Harris found that California law called for whole numbers, not decimals, to be used in weighted races. Even if it did, that doesn't justify using fractional vote counts in every single GEMS election across the country. Nor does it explain why Global/Diebold initially documented weighted races in their manual, then removed it while keeping the fractional counts in.
Oddly enough, one day after Global emailed employees about adding weighted races, Diebold announced its intent to acquire Global. This intervention by Diebold rescued Global from insolvency and helped ensure Dean had enough money to pay for his CG&G restitution.
What's also interesting is that both fraud features added under Dean's supervision - double books and fractional counts - are reminiscent of accounting fraud. "Two sets of books" is a widely-known accounting fraud technique, and fractional vote counts is essentially counting votes as money. It seems like the embezzler, who stole from CG&G with a computerized accounting system, intended to allow vote embezzlement on GEMS.
LHS Associates: secretive New England contractor
Even after big players like ES&S and Global/Diebold emerged, local election contractors remained. They largely became equipment distributors for these large vendors. Several of these local election contractors also have questionable ties to corruption and organized crime.
In New England, LHS Associates is the election contractor responsible for setting up voting machines throughout most of the region. Maintaining custody of the machines and sole authority to program them, their activities are shrouded in secrecy, immune to public records law. Very little about their history or personnel is know, but what is known doesn't paint them in a particularly good light.
LHS was founded in 1972 in Andover MA. They provided various computer services to Massachusetts towns, such as voter rolls, tax billing, jury lists, and census processing. Providing voter rolls led LHS into the election services industry, which became their primary business from then on. In 1985, they began selling optical scanners from Business Records Corporation. Then they became a distributor of Sequoia's punch card systems for about 6 years.
Finally, in 1991, LHS signed on as the New England distributor for Global Election Systems. They started selling the AccuVote OS in 1992, which came to be adopted by nearly all the towns in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Maine. LHS's role was programming the election info onto the memory cards, doing support and repair services on election day, and providing ballots to towns. In essence, they controlled nearly all of the elections across New England.
John Silvestro, the president and CEO of LHS for most of its time in the elections industry, was allegedly a long-time associate of Jeffrey Dean. This allegation is unverified, but he did appear in two internal Global emails that were also sent to Dean in Nov 2000 and Dec 2000.
Ken Hajjar, a childhood friend of Silvestro's who became LHS's director of sales and marketing, is a very suspicious character. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1987, but (possibly thanks to his political connections) received a deferred sentence and reduced fine. In an apparent conflict of interest, Hajjar (along with Silvestro) was involved in Londonderry NH local politics while working at LHS.
As discussions (1, 2) on the Londonderry town politics forum show, most of the town considered Hajjar to be an authoritarian bully at best and corrupt at worst. In 2007, he disparaged the idea that a local cabal of "good ole boys" was controlling local politics and vehemently opposed the formation of a Londonderry ethics committee, arguing it ran the risk of becoming an ideological "witch hunt".
One political issue Hajjar got involved in was the 1999 decision to site an AES power plant in Londonderry. Hajjar was so devoted to having the power plant built that he called into a NH radio show, yelled at two women activists opposing the plant, and threatened to "stuff the ballots". When these women told Silvestro, he dismissed their concerns before getting angry and walking away. On election day, Hajjar visited the polls repeatedly, announcing his intention to vote multiple times.
Hajjar also had a very bad opinion of election integrity activists. He told Dori Smith of a local radio program that questions about election integrity illustrated "how dangerous the Internet has become" and that many voting machine security reports were "superfluous". He also defended LHS's illegal activity of swapping out memory cards in the middle of elections, saying "I don't pay attention to every little law". In 2007, he attacked Brad Friedman as "full of shit", his readers as "looney idealogues [sic]", and New Hampshire election integrity activist Nancy Tobi as "clueless".
A man who threatened to rig an election over an AES power plant, dismisses election integrity concerns, happily breaks election law, and personally attacks election integrity activists? Sounds like the perfect person to work at a voting machine distributor. Even better if he also has a record of trafficking cocaine during the period that the CIA was importing it to fund the Contras.
Meanwhile, John Silvestro got angry when Hajjar's integrity was questioned, rather than being angry at Hajjar for threatening to rig an election. There's a pervasive integrity problem at LHS.
In New England, LHS Associates is the election contractor responsible for setting up voting machines throughout most of the region. Maintaining custody of the machines and sole authority to program them, their activities are shrouded in secrecy, immune to public records law. Very little about their history or personnel is know, but what is known doesn't paint them in a particularly good light.
LHS was founded in 1972 in Andover MA. They provided various computer services to Massachusetts towns, such as voter rolls, tax billing, jury lists, and census processing. Providing voter rolls led LHS into the election services industry, which became their primary business from then on. In 1985, they began selling optical scanners from Business Records Corporation. Then they became a distributor of Sequoia's punch card systems for about 6 years.
Finally, in 1991, LHS signed on as the New England distributor for Global Election Systems. They started selling the AccuVote OS in 1992, which came to be adopted by nearly all the towns in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Maine. LHS's role was programming the election info onto the memory cards, doing support and repair services on election day, and providing ballots to towns. In essence, they controlled nearly all of the elections across New England.
John Silvestro, the president and CEO of LHS for most of its time in the elections industry, was allegedly a long-time associate of Jeffrey Dean. This allegation is unverified, but he did appear in two internal Global emails that were also sent to Dean in Nov 2000 and Dec 2000.
Ken Hajjar, a childhood friend of Silvestro's who became LHS's director of sales and marketing, is a very suspicious character. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1987, but (possibly thanks to his political connections) received a deferred sentence and reduced fine. In an apparent conflict of interest, Hajjar (along with Silvestro) was involved in Londonderry NH local politics while working at LHS.
As discussions (1, 2) on the Londonderry town politics forum show, most of the town considered Hajjar to be an authoritarian bully at best and corrupt at worst. In 2007, he disparaged the idea that a local cabal of "good ole boys" was controlling local politics and vehemently opposed the formation of a Londonderry ethics committee, arguing it ran the risk of becoming an ideological "witch hunt".
One political issue Hajjar got involved in was the 1999 decision to site an AES power plant in Londonderry. Hajjar was so devoted to having the power plant built that he called into a NH radio show, yelled at two women activists opposing the plant, and threatened to "stuff the ballots". When these women told Silvestro, he dismissed their concerns before getting angry and walking away. On election day, Hajjar visited the polls repeatedly, announcing his intention to vote multiple times.
Hajjar also had a very bad opinion of election integrity activists. He told Dori Smith of a local radio program that questions about election integrity illustrated "how dangerous the Internet has become" and that many voting machine security reports were "superfluous". He also defended LHS's illegal activity of swapping out memory cards in the middle of elections, saying "I don't pay attention to every little law". In 2007, he attacked Brad Friedman as "full of shit", his readers as "looney idealogues [sic]", and New Hampshire election integrity activist Nancy Tobi as "clueless".
A man who threatened to rig an election over an AES power plant, dismisses election integrity concerns, happily breaks election law, and personally attacks election integrity activists? Sounds like the perfect person to work at a voting machine distributor. Even better if he also has a record of trafficking cocaine during the period that the CIA was importing it to fund the Contras.
Meanwhile, John Silvestro got angry when Hajjar's integrity was questioned, rather than being angry at Hajjar for threatening to rig an election. There's a pervasive integrity problem at LHS.
Sequoia: mob ties and the Carlyle Group
Sequoia is probably the oldest voting machine vendor in the country. It grew out of the Automated Voting Machine Corporation (AVM), a New York lever machine producer founded in 1898. AVM had a sordid history of bribery and possible Mafia connections throughout the 20th century. In 1973, chief executive Lloyd Dixon Jr. was indicted for bribing New York election officials and forced to resign. AVM's reputation was destroyed, especially with emerging bribery scandals in other states, and the company broke apart.
AVM was reconstituted as Sequoia Pacific in 1985. Sometime before 1999, Sequoia was acquired by the Jefferson Smurfit Group in Ireland. That year, Sequoia was involved in a Louisiana bribery scandal. Phil Foster, southern regional sales manager, delivered tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to Louisiana elections chief Jerry Fowler. Sequoia stood behind Foster, and his charges were thrown out, but Fowler was convicted, along with southeast representative Pasquale Ricci of New Jersey.
Daniel Hopsicker connected the bribery scandal to a larger mob-connected scheme beginning in 1996. Allegedly, Phil Foster got into gambling trouble at an Atlantic City casino in the mid-1990s. That same casino wanted to open a branch in New Orleans. So Foster got involved with taking kickbacks from the mob-connected Sequoia, presumably to allow their employees to fix elections in the state. Several candidates in the 1996 election, in which gambling was a major issue on the ballot, reported voting irregularities. Tony Giambelluca, who held the keys to the voting machine warehouse, turned up dead of suicide.
In 2002, Sequoia was purchased by British corporation De La Rue. After the acquisition, the Jefferson Smurfit Group held 15% and De La Rue held 85%. Both of these corporations were owned by/financially tied to private equity firm Madison Dearborn, a partner of the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group has owned various defense contractors (such as Northrop Grumman), been chaired by Reagan-era Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, employed George H.W. Bush, and had the Bin Laden family as investors.
De La Rue was politically-connected in other ways as well. It was the world's biggest commercial money printer, creating the Nicaraguan bank notes for George H.W. Bush and Iraqi bank notes for George W. Bush. One of De La Rue's largest investors was the Lowy family in Australia, which was vehemently pro-Israel and a big backer of the Democratic Party.
After losing money for several years, De La Rue sold Sequoia to Smartmatic in 2005. However, the CFIUS became concerned with Smartmatic's ties to pro-Chavez Venezuelan interests, and ordered them to sell Sequoia in 2007. The US managers of Sequoia held onto the company until 2010, when Dominion bought it.
However, it turns out that Smartmatic didn't fully divest itself of Sequoia. They continued to hold onto all of the intellectual property for Sequoia's voting systems. As a result, it's possible that Smartmatic still exerts some covert influence over Sequoia to this day. During 2016, there were concerns that George Soros was going to rig the election due to his control over Smartmatic. The link from Soros to Sequoia is tenuous (the CEO of the company holding Sequoia IP is a member of Soros's foundation) but interesting.
AVM was reconstituted as Sequoia Pacific in 1985. Sometime before 1999, Sequoia was acquired by the Jefferson Smurfit Group in Ireland. That year, Sequoia was involved in a Louisiana bribery scandal. Phil Foster, southern regional sales manager, delivered tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to Louisiana elections chief Jerry Fowler. Sequoia stood behind Foster, and his charges were thrown out, but Fowler was convicted, along with southeast representative Pasquale Ricci of New Jersey.
Daniel Hopsicker connected the bribery scandal to a larger mob-connected scheme beginning in 1996. Allegedly, Phil Foster got into gambling trouble at an Atlantic City casino in the mid-1990s. That same casino wanted to open a branch in New Orleans. So Foster got involved with taking kickbacks from the mob-connected Sequoia, presumably to allow their employees to fix elections in the state. Several candidates in the 1996 election, in which gambling was a major issue on the ballot, reported voting irregularities. Tony Giambelluca, who held the keys to the voting machine warehouse, turned up dead of suicide.
Susan Bernecker, a 1996 candidate who noticed Sequoia's machines registering her opponent's name on the screen when she tapped hers
In 2002, Sequoia was purchased by British corporation De La Rue. After the acquisition, the Jefferson Smurfit Group held 15% and De La Rue held 85%. Both of these corporations were owned by/financially tied to private equity firm Madison Dearborn, a partner of the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group has owned various defense contractors (such as Northrop Grumman), been chaired by Reagan-era Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, employed George H.W. Bush, and had the Bin Laden family as investors.
De La Rue was politically-connected in other ways as well. It was the world's biggest commercial money printer, creating the Nicaraguan bank notes for George H.W. Bush and Iraqi bank notes for George W. Bush. One of De La Rue's largest investors was the Lowy family in Australia, which was vehemently pro-Israel and a big backer of the Democratic Party.
After losing money for several years, De La Rue sold Sequoia to Smartmatic in 2005. However, the CFIUS became concerned with Smartmatic's ties to pro-Chavez Venezuelan interests, and ordered them to sell Sequoia in 2007. The US managers of Sequoia held onto the company until 2010, when Dominion bought it.
However, it turns out that Smartmatic didn't fully divest itself of Sequoia. They continued to hold onto all of the intellectual property for Sequoia's voting systems. As a result, it's possible that Smartmatic still exerts some covert influence over Sequoia to this day. During 2016, there were concerns that George Soros was going to rig the election due to his control over Smartmatic. The link from Soros to Sequoia is tenuous (the CEO of the company holding Sequoia IP is a member of Soros's foundation) but interesting.
Hart Intercivic, another Texas firm
Hart Intercivic is another voting machine vendor with major ties to Texas powerbrokers. Initially a mom-and-pop company owned by David Hart, he began to seek funding from venture capital and privatization firms when business slowed in the late 90s.
The company obtained $3.5 million of funding from Triton Ventures in 1999. It was a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Triton Energy, which made most of its profits exploiting Colombian oil fields. From 2000 to 2002, Hart Intercivic raised $40 million more from various venture capital sources.
One of Hart's investors was RES Partners, which represented Richard Salwen, a big donor to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Salwen was the former vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of Dell. He had also worked with Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a Texas-based technology contractor swimming in government (potentially CIA) contracts.
Another Hart investor was the investment firm of Tom Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers in 1999 and made George W. Bush a multi-millionaire.
In California and Ohio, Hart Intercivic entered into a joint venture with Maximus, a social services privatizer for state governments.
During 2011, Hart Intercivic was largely acquired by H.I.G. Capital. This investment firm had numerous ties to Mitt Romney. Eleven of its directors/partners came from Bain and Company, the firm Romney had been a partner at before starting Bain Capital. Two of those men were Romney bundlers. H.I.G was the 11th largest donor to the Romney campaign, with its employees donating $338,000 total to Romney. An investment firm founded by Romney's son, and invested in by Romney himself, was a minor investor in another one of H.I.G.'s funds.
H.I.G. was also criticized for political ties to Democrats after its Clinton Foundation donations were discovered.
The company obtained $3.5 million of funding from Triton Ventures in 1999. It was a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Triton Energy, which made most of its profits exploiting Colombian oil fields. From 2000 to 2002, Hart Intercivic raised $40 million more from various venture capital sources.
One of Hart's investors was RES Partners, which represented Richard Salwen, a big donor to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Salwen was the former vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of Dell. He had also worked with Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a Texas-based technology contractor swimming in government (potentially CIA) contracts.
Another Hart investor was the investment firm of Tom Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers in 1999 and made George W. Bush a multi-millionaire.
In California and Ohio, Hart Intercivic entered into a joint venture with Maximus, a social services privatizer for state governments.
During 2011, Hart Intercivic was largely acquired by H.I.G. Capital. This investment firm had numerous ties to Mitt Romney. Eleven of its directors/partners came from Bain and Company, the firm Romney had been a partner at before starting Bain Capital. Two of those men were Romney bundlers. H.I.G was the 11th largest donor to the Romney campaign, with its employees donating $338,000 total to Romney. An investment firm founded by Romney's son, and invested in by Romney himself, was a minor investor in another one of H.I.G.'s funds.
Tagg Romney, Mitt's son and an H.I.G. Capital investor
H.I.G. was also criticized for political ties to Democrats after its Clinton Foundation donations were discovered.
HAVA: who ordered this?
It should be very clear at this point that the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 didn't start the problems with electronic voting. But it did put electronic voting on steroids, forcing it to spread throughout the US.
HAVA was motivated by the disastrous 2000 election, in which ballot confusion, hanging chads, and voting issues dominated the news. As it turns out, many of the corrupt interests behind electronic voting machines were responsible some of the issues in the 2000 election. It's quite likely that the 2000 election debacle was intentionally engineered to create an environment conducive to HAVA.
According to multiple Sequoia employees, Sequoia commissioned punch card ballots specifically for Palm Beach County FL that were of poor quality, with the likely purpose of producing hanging chads and ruining the perception of punch cards. Global's optical scanners in Volusia and Brevard counties fraudulently accepted negative votes for Al Gore, causing the VNS to erroneously call Florida for Bush. Theresa LePore, who designed the infamous butterfly ballot, was a flight attendant for Iran-Contra weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi. And there were the thousands of suppressed Democratic votes.
All of these Florida election problems - hanging chads, butterfly ballots, disenfranchisement, negative votes - served to chip away at Gore's total and fraudulently give Bush the election. But they also created an environment of chaos on confusion on election night that provided the momentum for HAVA.
Who took advantage of that momentum? A couple key groups stand out.
Jack Abramoff
HAVA's main sponsor in the House was Ohio congressman Bob Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee. Ney worked on HAVA with Democratic congressmen Steny Hoyer and Chris Dodd. In 2006, Ney pleaded guilty in a major corruption scandal involving GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Jack Abramoff was a member of the Council for National Policy from 1984-85 and in 1988, the same years that Howard Ahmanson Jr. (younger cousin of the ES&S funders) served. That makes him the third person to be connected to both the CNP and election rigging, after the Hunts and Ahmanson.
Abramoff was a powerful lobbyist with significant influence in Republican circles, including over majority leader Tom DeLay and White House strategist Karl Rove (through his assistant Susan Ralston, who became Rove's assistant). During his lobbying career, he became ensnared in a multitude of corruption scandals involving casinos, corrupt lobbying in US territories, and defrauding Native American tribal clients. And, of course, his family did business with the mob.
Abramoff and his associates lobbied Ney on behalf of multiple clients, including SunCruz Casinos and the Tigua Indians. The lobbying included campaign contributions from these clients to Ney, as well as several trips funded by Abramoff. Bob Ney went on one such trip in 2002 and three in 2003.
One of Abramoff's requests to Ney involved putting a provision into the Help America Vote Act that would allow the Tigua Indians to reopen a casino on tribal land. Ney promised to put that provision into HAVA but never did. When the Tiguas failed to get the provision passed, they accused Abramoff, Ney, and others of defrauding them. The fallout of the scandal put both of them in jail.
Officially, Abramoff's only involvement in HAVA was pushing the failed Tigua amendment. But some have theorized that Abramoff had a deeper involvement in pushing Ney to support the bill.
Greenberg Traurig, the firm where Abramoff worked from 2001 until 2004, was hired by Diebold Election Systems in 2003 to lobby for the implementation of HAVA in New York. The firm was paid a total of $275,000 in lobbying expenses by Diebold. However, whether Abramoff was involved with that is unknown. The NYTimes article doesn't mention him, and Abramoff was forced to leave Greenberg Traurig in March 2004.
Bob Ney later claimed that another lobbyist, Dave Distefano, was the main person influencing him in pushing HAVA. He specifically mentioned Distefano's representation of Diebold, an Ohio company that had recently acquired Global and entered the elections business. Interestingly, though, Ney drew connections between Abramoff's people and Distefano, and said that Distefano was a small-time lobbyist being used by powerful interests. So Abramoff might have had influence over Distefano's activities as well.
Abramoff's persistent presence near HAVA, yet without any direct connection linking him to it, is quite interesting. While it may turn out to be a red herring, Abramoff's constant reoccurrence seems a bit too coincidental.
Bob Ney
Jack Abramoff was a member of the Council for National Policy from 1984-85 and in 1988, the same years that Howard Ahmanson Jr. (younger cousin of the ES&S funders) served. That makes him the third person to be connected to both the CNP and election rigging, after the Hunts and Ahmanson.
Abramoff was a powerful lobbyist with significant influence in Republican circles, including over majority leader Tom DeLay and White House strategist Karl Rove (through his assistant Susan Ralston, who became Rove's assistant). During his lobbying career, he became ensnared in a multitude of corruption scandals involving casinos, corrupt lobbying in US territories, and defrauding Native American tribal clients. And, of course, his family did business with the mob.
Jack Abramoff
Abramoff and his associates lobbied Ney on behalf of multiple clients, including SunCruz Casinos and the Tigua Indians. The lobbying included campaign contributions from these clients to Ney, as well as several trips funded by Abramoff. Bob Ney went on one such trip in 2002 and three in 2003.
One of Abramoff's requests to Ney involved putting a provision into the Help America Vote Act that would allow the Tigua Indians to reopen a casino on tribal land. Ney promised to put that provision into HAVA but never did. When the Tiguas failed to get the provision passed, they accused Abramoff, Ney, and others of defrauding them. The fallout of the scandal put both of them in jail.
Officially, Abramoff's only involvement in HAVA was pushing the failed Tigua amendment. But some have theorized that Abramoff had a deeper involvement in pushing Ney to support the bill.
Greenberg Traurig, the firm where Abramoff worked from 2001 until 2004, was hired by Diebold Election Systems in 2003 to lobby for the implementation of HAVA in New York. The firm was paid a total of $275,000 in lobbying expenses by Diebold. However, whether Abramoff was involved with that is unknown. The NYTimes article doesn't mention him, and Abramoff was forced to leave Greenberg Traurig in March 2004.
Bob Ney later claimed that another lobbyist, Dave Distefano, was the main person influencing him in pushing HAVA. He specifically mentioned Distefano's representation of Diebold, an Ohio company that had recently acquired Global and entered the elections business. Interestingly, though, Ney drew connections between Abramoff's people and Distefano, and said that Distefano was a small-time lobbyist being used by powerful interests. So Abramoff might have had influence over Distefano's activities as well.
Abramoff's persistent presence near HAVA, yet without any direct connection linking him to it, is quite interesting. While it may turn out to be a red herring, Abramoff's constant reoccurrence seems a bit too coincidental.
Defense contractors
Bev Harris's former publisher attended and recorded a voting machine industry meeting in 2003. The meeting included R. Doug Lewis of the Election Center, major vendors (such as ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, and Hart), and the Election Systems division of technology lobbyist ITAA. R. Doug Lewis set up the meeting, in which the ITAA was attempting to get the voting machine vendors to fund a pro-e-voting PR campaign by ITAA.
One participant asked whether the "Election Systems Task Force" would be reconstituted. R. Doug Lewis told them that the Task Force had been "more focused on the HAVA legislation but would be interested in meeting with this group". He mentioned that the Task Force was led by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, and Electronic Data Systems (EDS), who wanted HAVA passed to create business opportunities for themselves.
What "business opportunities" were these defense contractors looking for in the voting machine industry? Accenture did partner with Saudi-owned election.com in 2001 and lobby for a Pentagon Internet voting contract. EDS was developing a military e-voting system as well. Northrop Grumman partnered with voting machine vendor Diversified Dynamics in 2002 exactly one day after HAVA was signed into law. All of these business ventures ultimately went nowhere. Lockheed Martin had no discernible link to the elections industry at all.
The Election Systems Task Force was itself a division of the ITAA. All four of its defense contractor leaders were ITAA members. Keep in mind: the voting machine vendors weren't the ones who selected the ITAA. It was the Election Center and ITAA who approached the vendors. And even before they made that move in 2003, defense contractors in the ITAA were lobbying for HAVA. The picture that starts to emerge is that defense contractors and the Election Center were the real force pushing for e-voting, not the vendors.
Perhaps these defense contractors weren't trying to get into an elections industry that was already dominated by a few key players (ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, and Hart). Maybe their unprofitable business ventures were just a front for what the companies actually wanted: ushering in electronic voting systems controllable by deep state interests that would elect candidates in favor of war. Those were the real "business opportunities" being sought.
This next mysterious company provides even more support for that theory.
One participant asked whether the "Election Systems Task Force" would be reconstituted. R. Doug Lewis told them that the Task Force had been "more focused on the HAVA legislation but would be interested in meeting with this group". He mentioned that the Task Force was led by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, and Electronic Data Systems (EDS), who wanted HAVA passed to create business opportunities for themselves.
What "business opportunities" were these defense contractors looking for in the voting machine industry? Accenture did partner with Saudi-owned election.com in 2001 and lobby for a Pentagon Internet voting contract. EDS was developing a military e-voting system as well. Northrop Grumman partnered with voting machine vendor Diversified Dynamics in 2002 exactly one day after HAVA was signed into law. All of these business ventures ultimately went nowhere. Lockheed Martin had no discernible link to the elections industry at all.
The Election Systems Task Force was itself a division of the ITAA. All four of its defense contractor leaders were ITAA members. Keep in mind: the voting machine vendors weren't the ones who selected the ITAA. It was the Election Center and ITAA who approached the vendors. And even before they made that move in 2003, defense contractors in the ITAA were lobbying for HAVA. The picture that starts to emerge is that defense contractors and the Election Center were the real force pushing for e-voting, not the vendors.
Perhaps these defense contractors weren't trying to get into an elections industry that was already dominated by a few key players (ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, and Hart). Maybe their unprofitable business ventures were just a front for what the companies actually wanted: ushering in electronic voting systems controllable by deep state interests that would elect candidates in favor of war. Those were the real "business opportunities" being sought.
This next mysterious company provides even more support for that theory.
VoteHere: a CIA front?
Who do you think was the biggest election industry lobbyist for HAVA? ES&S? Diebold? Sequoia? The actual answer is none of the above. By far, the largest contributor was a mysterious little company called VoteHere.
Founded in 1998 by technology entrepreneur Jim Adler, VoteHere was attempting to break into the e-voting market. By 2000, Adler had secured $15 million in venture capital funding from Compaq, Cisco, and Northwest Venture Associates. The company's first product was an Internet voting system, which they released publicly to be met with harsh criticism by security researchers. By 2003, VoteHere had made barely any sales and made its source code private once again.
During VoteHere's early years, a mysterious group of insiders from the defense industry and elections joined the company in high-level positions. Among them were:
Let's list all the connections, shall we?
It goes even further than that. Maryland's lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems turned out to have also been the SAIC lobbyist. SAIC was commissioned by Maryland to review the security of Diebold's horribly insecure voting systems. The report was managed to excoriate Diebold's terrible security while still downplaying many of the risks. Maryland opted to use Diebold's machines anyway.
And one of SAIC's recommendations to improve Diebold's security was "Apply cryptographic protocols to protect transmission of vote tallies". In other words, it seemed to be recommending a crypto product like the one sold by VoteHere. Remember that Linda Lamone, the MD director of elections, appeared in letters involving Diebold and VoteHere. She was interested in adopting VoteHere's product, rather than using a paper trail (which she said she'd add "over my dead body").
In fact, this offers a clue to the relationship between SAIC and VoteHere. Owens and Gates, two former SAIC directors, approached Jim Adler of VoteHere with a proposition: let us control the direction of your company, and we'll make sure our SAIC buddies end up recommending your product when they review voting system security. Then SAIC got the job of reviewing Diebold's security in Maryland, and put out a report that avoided sinking Diebold while recommending VoteHere's product.
The constant presence of SAIC, a big military/CIA contractor, behind the push for HAVA is another piece of evidence that the national security state was deeply interested in electronic voting.
Founded in 1998 by technology entrepreneur Jim Adler, VoteHere was attempting to break into the e-voting market. By 2000, Adler had secured $15 million in venture capital funding from Compaq, Cisco, and Northwest Venture Associates. The company's first product was an Internet voting system, which they released publicly to be met with harsh criticism by security researchers. By 2003, VoteHere had made barely any sales and made its source code private once again.
During VoteHere's early years, a mysterious group of insiders from the defense industry and elections joined the company in high-level positions. Among them were:
- Ralph Munro, Secretary of State in Washington for 20 years. He joined VoteHere's board in January 2001, right after the end of his SoS term.
- Admiral Bill Owens, senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bill Clinton. He was named chairman of VoteHere's board in December 2001.
- Robert Gates, Iran-Contra veteran and former CIA director under George H.W. Bush. He took a seat on the advisory board likely around the same time.
Left - Admiral Bill Owens Right - Robert Gates
Under the guidance of these insiders, VoteHere poured a total of $580,000 into HAVA lobbying. This was far more than ES&S spent, and there's no sign that Diebold or Sequoia lobbied for HAVA at all. Yet VoteHere was a tiny company with no apparent revenue stream and nearly nonexistent role in the elections industry. Was VoteHere, under the leadership of people like Owens and Gates, doing the dirty lobbying work on behalf of the vendors?
At the same time, VoteHere began developing a new product: a purported cryptographic solution for vote verification that didn't require a paper trail. The goal was to convince the major election vendors to incorporate this product into their voting systems. How well did that plan work?
Sequoia partnered with VoteHere for that purpose in August 2003, although there's no evidence that Sequoia ever did adopt VoteHere's software. Bev Harris found documents about VoteHere's product in Diebold's dumpster, indicating that Diebold considered a similar partnership but didn't pursue it. Maryland State Administrator of Elections Linda Lamone also showed up in letters related to VoteHere.
In October 2003, VoteHere claimed they had been hacked. The alleged hack was used to harass Bev Harris, question her about the leaked Diebold memos (rather than VoteHere), and strong-arm her into turning over a log of visitors to her election integrity activism website. She ultimately suspected that the hack was manufactured as an entrapment scheme for her. Both Owens and Gates left VoteHere soon after the alleged hack. Did they finally have no further use for VoteHere? Did Adler force them out?
VoteHere floundered along after that. In 2005, they hired a well-connected New York lobbying group to lobby against a state law provision mandating paper ballots in the HAVA implementation. They later expanded to Dategrity Corporation, and made a couple other election products (like the Mail-In Ballot Tracker). But VoteHere never became a big name.
The nature of VoteHere is mysterious and fascinating. It's still never been explained why Admiral Bill Owens and former CIA director Robert Gates ended up on its board. And VoteHere's actions seemed to primarily benefit others, not itself. The major voting machine vendors profited immensely from a law that VoteHere spent big bucks promoting, while VoteHere itself only faded away.
To me, VoteHere has the appearance of a military/CIA shell company whose sole purpose was to grow the rest of the elections industry. That would reinforce the theory about the Election Systems Task Force: that the national security state wanted electronic voting for the purpose of controlling the political system.
SAIC
Between the ITAA, the Election Systems Task Force, and VoteHere, one common thread pops up: SAIC. SAIC is one of the largest government contractors, providing services to the CIA and Pentagon. Many of its former and current executives have come from those same government agencies.Let's list all the connections, shall we?
- Ronald Knecht, director of the ITAA's Election Systems division, was the senior vice president of SAIC at the same time.
- SAIC helped Diversified Dynamics, which later partnered with Northrop Grumman, engineer their voting systems
- Admiral Bill Owens and Robert Gates were both on the SAIC board of directors shortly before coming over to VoteHere
It goes even further than that. Maryland's lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems turned out to have also been the SAIC lobbyist. SAIC was commissioned by Maryland to review the security of Diebold's horribly insecure voting systems. The report was managed to excoriate Diebold's terrible security while still downplaying many of the risks. Maryland opted to use Diebold's machines anyway.
And one of SAIC's recommendations to improve Diebold's security was "Apply cryptographic protocols to protect transmission of vote tallies". In other words, it seemed to be recommending a crypto product like the one sold by VoteHere. Remember that Linda Lamone, the MD director of elections, appeared in letters involving Diebold and VoteHere. She was interested in adopting VoteHere's product, rather than using a paper trail (which she said she'd add "over my dead body").
In fact, this offers a clue to the relationship between SAIC and VoteHere. Owens and Gates, two former SAIC directors, approached Jim Adler of VoteHere with a proposition: let us control the direction of your company, and we'll make sure our SAIC buddies end up recommending your product when they review voting system security. Then SAIC got the job of reviewing Diebold's security in Maryland, and put out a report that avoided sinking Diebold while recommending VoteHere's product.
The constant presence of SAIC, a big military/CIA contractor, behind the push for HAVA is another piece of evidence that the national security state was deeply interested in electronic voting.
Yang Enterprises and the death of Ray Lemme
Another government contractor had a suspicious connection to election fraud: Yang Enterprises (YEI) of Oviedo FL. Curiously, back in 2001, YEI listed both Northrop Grumman and SAIC as business partners.
Yang Enterprises started off in 1986 as a small company run by a Chinese couple. In 1993, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang took control of the company. Somehow, YEI ended up obtaining a massive array of high-level government and corporate contracts. Its corporate clients included oil companies (like Exxon and Shell), media companies (like Disney and 20th Century Fox), and (as mentioned) Northrop Grumman and SAIC. Its government clients included NASA space centers and Florida agencies (such as the Department of Transportation and Department of Children & Families).
This would be a hard feat to pull off without being politically-connected, and they were. YEI had on its payroll Tom Feeney, a close political ally of the Bush family. Feeney was a member of the Florida House while serving as the registered lobbyist and corporate counsel for YEI. Sound like a conflict of interest?
Did I mention that Feeney also went on one of Jack Abramoff's trips after becoming a congressman?
In 1998, a man named Clint Curtis joined YEI and became their lead programmer. While there, Curtis observed numerous illegal activities, which he later blew the whistle on. His story is well-documented by BradBlog and the documentary Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies. As incredible as it all sounds, virtually all of Curtis's story has been proven correct.
Curtis observed numerous illegal activities at YEI, including Chinese espionage and political corruption involving Feeney. Feeney was even talking openly about the Bush Administration's plans for war in the Middle East, and their intent to capitalize on an event that would allow them to lead through fear (perhaps referring to 9/11?). Yang Enterprises could make an entire blog post of its own.
Most relevant to election rigging, however, was Feeney's request for YEI to build vote rigging software. As lobbyist and corporate counsel to YEI, Feeney was constantly feeding them contract ideas. Curtis, as YEI technical advisor, would respond whether or not they were technically feasible. In October 2000, Feeney asked if YEI could develop a "touchscreen-capable" vote rigging prototype that remained hidden.
Curtis didn't believe such a program was possible. He argued that hiding the rigging code would be impossible if the source code was inspected. At the time, Curtis assumed that voting machine code would be inspected (and that programmers like Talbot Iredale wouldn't try to evade certification). Mrs. Yang, however, cut him off and agreed YEI would build the prototype to give Feeney "something to show".
Being a Republican at the time, Curtis believed Feeney wanted the prototype so he could catch the Democrats trying to rig the voting machines. He built the prototype, along with documentation on how to detect such a program in voting machines, and delivered it to Mrs. Yang. Her response shocked him:
Having become disgusted at the corruption and criminality in YEI, Curtis resigned around the time of the 2000 election. He took a job at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), one of YEI's clients.
YEI flipped out when they learned Curtis was working at FDOT and offered him up to $1 million in hush money to leave Tallahassee and keep his mouth shut. Alerted to the fact that FDOT clearly had something to hide, he found (along with his supervisor Mavis Georgalis) that YEI had been systematically overbilling FDOT for years.
Curtis and Georgalis went to the FDOT Inspector General's office together and reported everything they knew about YEI: overbilling FDOT, improper political influence by Feeney, illegal alien employment, espionage, and Feeney's commissioning of vote rigging software. For blowing the whistle, both Curtis and Georgalis were fired from FDOT. Georgalis found herself under investigation by FDOT for phony bribery charges. Curtis couldn't get another programming job due to poor recommendations from YEI and FDOT, and had to work at the dollar store.
One day in 2003, Curtis was visited by Ray Lemme, the FDOT investigator who had taken his initial report. Lemme informed Curtis that pressure from the top (referring to Governor Jeb Bush) was being exerted to shut down the investigation, and that he was conducting an unofficial side investigation. He came back several times to interview Curtis, each time claiming to be a little closer to cracking the case.
In mid June of 2003, Lemme was ecstatic. He told Curtis that he had tracked the corruption "all the way to the top", that the story would break in a few weeks, and that Curtis would be thrilled with it. A couple weeks later, Lemme was found dead in a Valdosta GA motel room of a suspicious "suicide".
To this day, what Lemme uncovered is unknown. But it was clearly important enough to murder him over.
Yang Enterprises is an important part of the story behind election rigging. There's no proof that the prototype Feeney commissioned was used to steal any elections. But it clearly shows that Feeney (who may have been corruptly influenced by Abramoff), and the Bush/neocon network he associated with, was interested in computerized election theft as far back as 2000.
Furthermore, it shows how election rigging conspiracies don't operate in a vacuum. YEI is at the center of numerous conspiracies: election fraud, Chinese espionage, child sex trafficking (yet again), the Inslaw/PROMIS scandal, and the neoconservative plan for war in the Middle East (including 9/11).
Yang Enterprises started off in 1986 as a small company run by a Chinese couple. In 1993, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang took control of the company. Somehow, YEI ended up obtaining a massive array of high-level government and corporate contracts. Its corporate clients included oil companies (like Exxon and Shell), media companies (like Disney and 20th Century Fox), and (as mentioned) Northrop Grumman and SAIC. Its government clients included NASA space centers and Florida agencies (such as the Department of Transportation and Department of Children & Families).
This would be a hard feat to pull off without being politically-connected, and they were. YEI had on its payroll Tom Feeney, a close political ally of the Bush family. Feeney was a member of the Florida House while serving as the registered lobbyist and corporate counsel for YEI. Sound like a conflict of interest?
Did I mention that Feeney also went on one of Jack Abramoff's trips after becoming a congressman?
In 1998, a man named Clint Curtis joined YEI and became their lead programmer. While there, Curtis observed numerous illegal activities, which he later blew the whistle on. His story is well-documented by BradBlog and the documentary Murder, Spies, and Voting Lies. As incredible as it all sounds, virtually all of Curtis's story has been proven correct.
Curtis observed numerous illegal activities at YEI, including Chinese espionage and political corruption involving Feeney. Feeney was even talking openly about the Bush Administration's plans for war in the Middle East, and their intent to capitalize on an event that would allow them to lead through fear (perhaps referring to 9/11?). Yang Enterprises could make an entire blog post of its own.
Feeney alluding to 9/11? (Note: Curtis's self-published book used "Wong" in place of "Yang")
Most relevant to election rigging, however, was Feeney's request for YEI to build vote rigging software. As lobbyist and corporate counsel to YEI, Feeney was constantly feeding them contract ideas. Curtis, as YEI technical advisor, would respond whether or not they were technically feasible. In October 2000, Feeney asked if YEI could develop a "touchscreen-capable" vote rigging prototype that remained hidden.
Curtis didn't believe such a program was possible. He argued that hiding the rigging code would be impossible if the source code was inspected. At the time, Curtis assumed that voting machine code would be inspected (and that programmers like Talbot Iredale wouldn't try to evade certification). Mrs. Yang, however, cut him off and agreed YEI would build the prototype to give Feeney "something to show".
Being a Republican at the time, Curtis believed Feeney wanted the prototype so he could catch the Democrats trying to rig the voting machines. He built the prototype, along with documentation on how to detect such a program in voting machines, and delivered it to Mrs. Yang. Her response shocked him:
You don't understand: in order to get this contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida.Curtis was stunned that Feeney and Yang actually planned to steal the election. He later heard Feeney discussing plans to suppress the "black vote" in Florida through "exclusion lists" and "police patrols". Indeed, there was a massive amount of racially-targeted voter disenfranchisement in the 2000 Florida election.
Having become disgusted at the corruption and criminality in YEI, Curtis resigned around the time of the 2000 election. He took a job at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), one of YEI's clients.
Clint Curtis, being interviewed about his experience several years later
YEI flipped out when they learned Curtis was working at FDOT and offered him up to $1 million in hush money to leave Tallahassee and keep his mouth shut. Alerted to the fact that FDOT clearly had something to hide, he found (along with his supervisor Mavis Georgalis) that YEI had been systematically overbilling FDOT for years.
Curtis and Georgalis went to the FDOT Inspector General's office together and reported everything they knew about YEI: overbilling FDOT, improper political influence by Feeney, illegal alien employment, espionage, and Feeney's commissioning of vote rigging software. For blowing the whistle, both Curtis and Georgalis were fired from FDOT. Georgalis found herself under investigation by FDOT for phony bribery charges. Curtis couldn't get another programming job due to poor recommendations from YEI and FDOT, and had to work at the dollar store.
One day in 2003, Curtis was visited by Ray Lemme, the FDOT investigator who had taken his initial report. Lemme informed Curtis that pressure from the top (referring to Governor Jeb Bush) was being exerted to shut down the investigation, and that he was conducting an unofficial side investigation. He came back several times to interview Curtis, each time claiming to be a little closer to cracking the case.
In mid June of 2003, Lemme was ecstatic. He told Curtis that he had tracked the corruption "all the way to the top", that the story would break in a few weeks, and that Curtis would be thrilled with it. A couple weeks later, Lemme was found dead in a Valdosta GA motel room of a suspicious "suicide".
The entrance to the motel room where Lemme supposedly killed himself
To this day, what Lemme uncovered is unknown. But it was clearly important enough to murder him over.
Yang Enterprises is an important part of the story behind election rigging. There's no proof that the prototype Feeney commissioned was used to steal any elections. But it clearly shows that Feeney (who may have been corruptly influenced by Abramoff), and the Bush/neocon network he associated with, was interested in computerized election theft as far back as 2000.
Furthermore, it shows how election rigging conspiracies don't operate in a vacuum. YEI is at the center of numerous conspiracies: election fraud, Chinese espionage, child sex trafficking (yet again), the Inslaw/PROMIS scandal, and the neoconservative plan for war in the Middle East (including 9/11).
Conclusion
Far too often, the study of deep politics leaves out election rigging. This is a fatal mistake: not only are fraudulent elections a central tool used by the deep state to maintain their power, the history of electronic voting is intricately linked with other deep state conspiracies.
Mae Brussell presciently said that "the roots of vote fraud" were in Dallas. Following JFK's assassination, a nationwide effort took place to seize elections from the public. It largely took place right under our noses.
As the media kept up the illusion that nothing was awry, the political power elite computerized and consolidated our election process. Every major voting machine vendor today has a history of political conflicts of interest, CIA and/or mob connections, and criminals running them. Even more disturbingly, there's a consistent pattern of the same people who abuse children being involved with running elections.
If you want to know how the deep state always manages to get its candidates into power, this is the place to look. The deep state had its hands all over getting our election system to where it is today. And they still control it.
We need to return to publicly-observed hand-counted paper ballots. It's time to take elections out of the hands of private interests and return them to the public where they belong. But we also need to understand the entire criminal network behind election stealing. Because it's more than just that: that criminal network is the deep state.
Mae Brussell presciently said that "the roots of vote fraud" were in Dallas. Following JFK's assassination, a nationwide effort took place to seize elections from the public. It largely took place right under our noses.
As the media kept up the illusion that nothing was awry, the political power elite computerized and consolidated our election process. Every major voting machine vendor today has a history of political conflicts of interest, CIA and/or mob connections, and criminals running them. Even more disturbingly, there's a consistent pattern of the same people who abuse children being involved with running elections.
If you want to know how the deep state always manages to get its candidates into power, this is the place to look. The deep state had its hands all over getting our election system to where it is today. And they still control it.
We need to return to publicly-observed hand-counted paper ballots. It's time to take elections out of the hands of private interests and return them to the public where they belong. But we also need to understand the entire criminal network behind election stealing. Because it's more than just that: that criminal network is the deep state.
posted by Marionumber1 @ 22:43
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