"If
You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"
Posted February 2, 2003
thepeoplesvoice.org
by
Thom Hartmann
Maybe Nebraska
Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it's true
that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic
Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in
Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his
campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush,
Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally
decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win
those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in
the last few election cycles.
Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a
science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in
Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the
United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore.
Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit
polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed,
computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and
tabulating ballots.
But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the
voters' hand to prove it.
You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all
its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders -
would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the
computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software
and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a
paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was
evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote
counts.
You'd be wrong.
The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx)
has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now
Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own
part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed,
programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of
the citizens of Nebraska.
Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his
company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning
upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post
(1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent
Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November
election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com,
Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black
communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first
Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.
Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie
Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov
website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United
States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the
biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."
What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those
votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by
the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that
company.
"This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said
Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm).
"They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me."
Is Matulka the sore loser the Hagel campaign paints him as, or is he
democracy's proverbial canary in the mineshaft?
In Georgia, Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland was defeated by
Saxby Chambliss, who'd avoided service in Vietnam with a "medical
deferment" but ran his campaign on the theme that he was more patriotic
than Cleland. While many in Georgia expected a big win by Cleland, the
computerized voting machines said that Chambliss had won.
The BBC summed up Georgia voters' reaction in a 6 November 2002 headline:
"GEORGIA UPSET STUNS DEMOCRATS." The BBC echoed the confusion of
many Georgia voters when they wrote, "Mr. Cleland - an army veteran who
lost three limbs in a grenade explosion during the Vietnam War - had long
been considered 'untouchable' on questions of defense and national
security."
Between them, Hagel and Chambliss' victories sealed Republican control of
the Senate. Odds are both won fair and square, the American way, using huge
piles of corporate money to carpet-bomb voters with television advertising.
But either the appearance or the possibility of impropriety in an election
casts a shadow over American democracy.
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by
which all other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine over 200
years ago. "To take away this right is to reduce a man to
slavery.."
That slavery, according to Hagel's last opponent Charlie Matulka, is at
our doorstep.
"They can take over our country without firing a shot," Matulka
said, "just by taking over our election systems."
Taking over our election systems? Is that really possible in the USA?
Bev Harris of www.talion.com
and www.blackboxvoting.com
has looked into the situation in depth and thinks Matulka may be on to
something. The company tied to Hagel even threatened her with legal action
when she went public about his company having built the machines that
counted his landslide votes. (Her response was to put the law firm's threat
letter on her website and send a press release to 4000 editors, inviting
them to check it out. www.blackboxvoting.com/election-systems-software.html)
"I suspect they're getting ready to do this all across all the
states," Matulka said in a January 30, 2003 interview. "God help
us if Bush gets his touch screens all across the country," he added,
"because they leave no paper trail. These corporations are taking over
America, and they just about have control of our voting machines."
In the meantime, exit-polling organizations have quietly gone out of
business, and the news arms of the huge multinational corporations that own
our networks are suggesting the days of exit polls are over. Virtually none
were reported in 2002, creating an odd and unsettling silence that caused
unease for the many American voters who had come to view exit polls as proof
of the integrity of their election systems.
As all this comes to light, many citizens and even a few politicians are
wondering if it's a good idea for corporations to be so involved in the guts
of our voting systems. The whole idea of a democratic republic was to create
a common institution (the government itself) owned by its citizens,
answerable to its citizens, and authorized to exist and continue existing
solely "by the consent of the governed."
Prior to 1886 - when, law schools incorrectly tell law students, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with equal
protection and other "human rights" - it was illegal in most
states for corporations to involve themselves in politics at all, much less
to service the core mechanism of politics. And during the era of Teddy
Roosevelt, who said, "There can be no effective control of corporations
while their political activity remains," numerous additional laws were
passed to restrain corporations from involvement in politics.
Wisconsin, for example, had a law that explicitly stated:
"No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or
contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or
indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees
or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or
individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of
influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy
of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political
office."
The penalty for violating that law was dissolution of the corporation,
and "any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative
of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation" would
be subject to "imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not
less than one nor more than five years" and a substantial fine.
However, the recent political trend has moved us in the opposite
direction, with governments answerable to "We, The People" turning
over administration of our commons to corporations answerable only to CEOs,
boards, and stockholders. The result is the enrichment of corporations and
the appearance that democracy in America has started to resemble its parody
in banana republics.
But if America still is a democratic republic, then We, The People still
own our government. And the way our ownership and management of our common
government (and its assets) is asserted is through the vote.
On most levels, privatization is only a "small sin" against
democracy. Turning a nation's or community's water, septic, roadway,
prisons, airwaves, or health care commons over to private corporations has
so far demonstrably degraded the quality of life for average citizens and
enriched a few of the most powerful campaign contributors. But it hasn't
been the end of democracy (although some wonder about what the FCC is
preparing to do - but that's a separate story).
Many citizens believe, however, that turning the programming and
maintenance of voting over to private, for-profit corporations, answerable
only to their owners, officers, and stockholders, puts democracy itself at
peril.
And, argues Charlie Matulka, for a former officer of one of those
corporations to then place himself into an election without disclosing such
an apparent conflict of interest is to create a parody of democracy.
Perhaps Matulka's been reading too many conspiracy theory tracts. Or
maybe he's on to something. We won't know until a truly independent
government agency looks into the matter.
When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel
and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for
ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not
questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of
his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he
ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on
Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. After the second
meeting, on the afternoon of January 27th, the Director of the Senate Ethics
Committee resigned his job.
Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Charlie Matulka had requested a hand count
of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel. He just learned his request
was denied because, he said, Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits
government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a
recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said,
are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel.
Matulka shared his news with me, then sighed loud and long on the phone,
as if he were watching his children's future evaporate.
"If you want to win the election," he finally said, "just
control the machines."
Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of
Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights." www.unequalprotection.com
This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for
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