Posted on 3-2-2003
USA's
EEC - Electronic Electoral Corruption
by Thom Hartmann* (see photo)
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
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