Thursday, June 08, 2006
Corporations and Voter Integrity
Conflict of Interest: Corporate Control of Elections
The Elections Center Leads Industry Attack on Computer Scientists
Promotes Insecure DRE machines at Public’s Expense
Must read point-by-point summary for voters, election integrity auditors, election officials, legislators and the media researched by AUDITAZ co-founder Sandra Spangler
This summary, exposes a secret network that used its power to lobby Congress through ties to Jack Abramoff to influence the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and obstruct all reform amendments that would mandate voter verification mechanisms.
Read the full summary here.
The summary is a roadmap that outlines how the U.S. Election system has become corrupted and now functions on behalf of the financial interest of vendors and denies access to the public. Once people understand what really happens behind the scenes, they will become empowered to challenge the pseudo authority of an industry that has taken advantage of public funding to increase profits and thwart fair voting and accessible voting systems for the disabled. When the people awaken to the reality that elections officials must be able to prove the accuracy of elections, they will demand accountability—voting systems that require random manual audits and durable paper ballots. We the people must fight corporate control and restore public oversight, transparency and integrity to American elections.
Even though Diebold has been thoroughly discredited now in the mainstream press with the discovery of indisputable security holes that threaten national security, the company continues to act as if it has the power to remain unscathed. Diebold relies on its carefully cultivated influence with revolving door former office holders and regulators who align with the company or even form private certifying companies to offer services to states to ensure certification of machines revealed to be engineered to make tampering undetectable. Current National Association of Elections Directors (NASED) President Linda Lamone recently hired a firm headed by Paul Craft, former head of Florida’s certification agency, to “independently test” in order to approve Diebold paperless voting. Craft also served on the National Association of Standards (NIST) Technical Guidelines Development Committee and intervened on behalf of vendors to water down guidelines in violation of an EAC charter that prohibits conflict of interest in decision-making.
The Elections Center operated by R. Doug Lewis, trains and professionalizes private associations of election officials in order to train state and local election officials to administer elections, and promote the sale of paperless touch-screen DRE machines on behalf of profit-seeking vendors competing for 3.8 billion in HAVA money. The Elections Center uses elections officials they have trained to promote electronic voting, marginalize and demonize computer expert critics and election officials who tell the truth about the massive security holes found in Diebold TSx and optical scan voting systems.
Additionally, The National Association of Counties endorsed alternatives to DRE voting that were known to the Board of Supervisors in Pima County when they chose to vote in favor of Diebold, at the objections of AuditAZ and Pima County concerned voters. The Pima County Board of Supervisors must here from more citizens on why this was such a harmful decisions to the voters of Tucson.
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