"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

[Guest guest]

"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

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by Thom Hartmann

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm

Friday 31 January 2003

 

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 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 reprint in print,

email, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

 

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed

without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the

included information for research and educational purposes.)

 

 

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