Does Major Defense Contractor Want To Control Your Vote Too?
What have we here? United Technologies is offering a takeover bid of $2.63 billion for Diebold, the voting machine company.
According to the AP via Yahoo, "Parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, United Technologies Corp. said it made the unsolicited offer after attempting to negotiate a deal with Diebold for two years.
"...Diebold's ATM presence in China is attractive to United Technologies, but Nigel Coe of Deutsche Bank-North America said Diebold's commercial security integration and monitoring business also 'will help United Technologies gain more scale in the United States.'
"Hartford-based United Technologies, which is capitalizing on strong aerospace and defense industry trends, reported revenue last year of $54.7 billion, up 14.5 percent from 2006. Net income for the year was $4.2 billion, up more than 13 percent.
"Paul Nisbet, an analyst at JSA Research Inc. in Newport, R.I., said it's a good deal for United Technologies.
" 'I don't see anything negative about it,' he said."
Well, he wouldn't, but how about American voters. This little line in the article, "Diebold has faced criticism over the performance of some of its election machines." is an understatement.
Diebold has a terrible electronic voting machine and optical scanner counting record.
I've written about companies like Diebold including this posting, "Electronic Machines And Our Votes," 11/2/07 "
"AlterNet is asking "Should Voting Machine Manufacturers Be Sued Like BigTobacco?"
" 'The loud, resounding answer from American voters should be, 'Hell, yes!'
"The article quotes John Bonifaz, founder of the National Voting Rights Institute, "It is our view at Voter Action that this whole question must be brought to a new level," said John Bonifaz, the group's legal director. "It is akin to the scrutiny that finally was applied to the big tobacco companies, with respect to what they knew and when they knew the effects of the products that they were marketing."
"Activist electronic voting watchdog groups and individuals like BradBlog, BlackBoxVoting, VerifiedVoting.org, have been sounding the alarm about electronic voting machines, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) or touch screen, for the almost a decade.
"Bush stole the 2000 presidential election with the help of the Supreme Court and probably stole the 2004 election with the help of DREs. Who knows how many federal, state and local offices have been stolen by Republicans since DRE's became the norm after 2002? DREs appeared everywhere thanks to a Republican controlled Congress passing HAVA so that Republican owned electronic voting machine companies could make billions at the county, state and federal money troughs funded by taxpayers and rig votes undetected to insure that Republican candidates won. It's time for voters to emphatically say 'enough, sue the bastards!'
"This is not just about defective equipment but fraud that has been cited and denounced ad infinitum by watchdog groups and computer experts. These companies should be sued for perpetrating fraud by illegally stealing, flipping, and/or erasing Americans' votes leaving virtually no trace, but was discovered by mathematical and computer experts as statistical anomalies or impossibilities."
As Paul Krugman wrote about Diebold, "Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, ''I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.' No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell -- who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations -- happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
"Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary -- on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled ''rob-Georgia.zip.'') The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.
"An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions."
According to the AP via Yahoo, "Parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, United Technologies Corp. said it made the unsolicited offer after attempting to negotiate a deal with Diebold for two years.
"...Diebold's ATM presence in China is attractive to United Technologies, but Nigel Coe of Deutsche Bank-North America said Diebold's commercial security integration and monitoring business also 'will help United Technologies gain more scale in the United States.'
"Hartford-based United Technologies, which is capitalizing on strong aerospace and defense industry trends, reported revenue last year of $54.7 billion, up 14.5 percent from 2006. Net income for the year was $4.2 billion, up more than 13 percent.
"Paul Nisbet, an analyst at JSA Research Inc. in Newport, R.I., said it's a good deal for United Technologies.
" 'I don't see anything negative about it,' he said."
Well, he wouldn't, but how about American voters. This little line in the article, "Diebold has faced criticism over the performance of some of its election machines." is an understatement.
Diebold has a terrible electronic voting machine and optical scanner counting record.
I've written about companies like Diebold including this posting, "Electronic Machines And Our Votes," 11/2/07 "
"AlterNet is asking "Should Voting Machine Manufacturers Be Sued Like BigTobacco?"
" 'The loud, resounding answer from American voters should be, 'Hell, yes!'
"The article quotes John Bonifaz, founder of the National Voting Rights Institute, "It is our view at Voter Action that this whole question must be brought to a new level," said John Bonifaz, the group's legal director. "It is akin to the scrutiny that finally was applied to the big tobacco companies, with respect to what they knew and when they knew the effects of the products that they were marketing."
"Activist electronic voting watchdog groups and individuals like BradBlog, BlackBoxVoting, VerifiedVoting.org, have been sounding the alarm about electronic voting machines, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) or touch screen, for the almost a decade.
"Bush stole the 2000 presidential election with the help of the Supreme Court and probably stole the 2004 election with the help of DREs. Who knows how many federal, state and local offices have been stolen by Republicans since DRE's became the norm after 2002? DREs appeared everywhere thanks to a Republican controlled Congress passing HAVA so that Republican owned electronic voting machine companies could make billions at the county, state and federal money troughs funded by taxpayers and rig votes undetected to insure that Republican candidates won. It's time for voters to emphatically say 'enough, sue the bastards!'
"This is not just about defective equipment but fraud that has been cited and denounced ad infinitum by watchdog groups and computer experts. These companies should be sued for perpetrating fraud by illegally stealing, flipping, and/or erasing Americans' votes leaving virtually no trace, but was discovered by mathematical and computer experts as statistical anomalies or impossibilities."
As Paul Krugman wrote about Diebold, "Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, ''I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.' No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell -- who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations -- happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
"What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
"Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary -- on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled ''rob-Georgia.zip.'') The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.
"An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions."
Last year, California's Secretary of State decertified Diebold election machines.
"Secretary Bowen’s decisions on voting system certifications follow her thorough review of detailed academic findings by teams of nationally respected computer experts, as well as extensive input from voters, voting system vendors, and national, state and local elections experts," according to California Progress Report.
Now we have the parent company of a defense contractor bidding on Diebold supposedly for its ATM expertise. (If it's anything like their election machinery, that is dubious expertise for the consumer.) Do they plan to get out of the electronic election manufacturing business? Doesn't sound like it if Diebold's security and monitoring business is also important to United Technologies.
This would appear to be a potential, dangerous conflict of interest: a company with government defense contracts buying a Republican owned election machinery company that has been accused, with strong evidence, of perpetrating fraud on American voters by controlling the outcome of elections by delivering electronic machine votes for Republican Party candidates.
"Secretary Bowen’s decisions on voting system certifications follow her thorough review of detailed academic findings by teams of nationally respected computer experts, as well as extensive input from voters, voting system vendors, and national, state and local elections experts," according to California Progress Report.
Now we have the parent company of a defense contractor bidding on Diebold supposedly for its ATM expertise. (If it's anything like their election machinery, that is dubious expertise for the consumer.) Do they plan to get out of the electronic election manufacturing business? Doesn't sound like it if Diebold's security and monitoring business is also important to United Technologies.
This would appear to be a potential, dangerous conflict of interest: a company with government defense contracts buying a Republican owned election machinery company that has been accused, with strong evidence, of perpetrating fraud on American voters by controlling the outcome of elections by delivering electronic machine votes for Republican Party candidates.
Posted by Kaz at 3/3/2008 1:09 PM 
Categories: Military, elections, Republicans, Bushites, Voting Problems
Categories: Military, elections, Republicans, Bushites, Voting Problems
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