Just back in town after a day off, and man do I have a lot to catch up with…While I’m doing that, if you haven’t noticed already, the Franklin County, Ohio Elections Director, Matt Damschroder, who last week acknowledged accepting a $10,000 check from a lobbyist for Diebold, was given a slap on the wrist yesterday and docked 30 days pay from his yearly $97,240 salary.
He has also claimed that the Diebold lobbyist, Pasquale “Pat” Gallina, told him that he’d made $50,000 in donations to groups that support Ohio’s Secretary of State (and, coincidentally, the Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Re-Elect Committee) J. Kenneth Blackwell.
All of this has come about amidst a lawsuit filed by voting machine company, ES&S in Ohio against Blackwell for giving the entire state to Diebold. This should be very interesting to watch. Depositions are upcoming.
In the meantime, while Franklin County’s head of election, who seems to have accepted a $10,000 bribe gets off virtually scot-free, Sherole Eaton — the courageous whistleblower from Hocking County, OH, who gave testimony in an affidavit of employees from voting machine company, Triad gaming the Ohio recount — has been accused of absolutely nothing. Nonetheless, she is still fired from the Hocking County Board of Elections.
Ohio. Retaining its slim edge over Florida for now…as the filthiest fucking state in the union.
the Bu$h/Cheney/Rove USA…
Sick Government Stolen Gangsters…
Killers… And Buds Lie In the Shit…
Jolly
Meanwhile on the far side of Turd Blossom Street…
Creative people are Given hidden tools…
Out of the Earth to pry lose truths from the Gods…
To slay the lie-fire smoking muck…
Foaming from the death dragons forked tongue…
Singing their Happy Motto…
They are already Dead a long time ago
More stuff @ http://www.RogerART.com
Damn, did he buy Philly Cheese Steaks with all the $$$ ????
As Secretary of State, will Blackwell have tactical control over all the tabulators, when he runs for governor of Ohio? I’m refering to the revelations by Fritakis that Blackwell’s office could access all the tabulators in the 2004 election. Will it be the same way in 2006 or 2008 when Blackwell is the R candidate for governor?
Welcome back Brad.
Aren’t the CEO’s of Diebold and ES&S brothers? I think i remember reading that somewhere. Maybe it was on the Hidden Ballots DvD.
I may be totally off base but I think I remember hearing that. So much info. I am on overload.
Brad Happy Birthday! (belated)
Someone feed that fat-f##k Damschroder another do-nut and watch him assplode!
Links to docs: Diebold dumpster dive yields financial documents
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:16:46 -0700 (PDT)
Permission granted to reprint, with link. Please forward
to your lists and to online blogs as appropriate.
NEW DOCUMENTS FROM DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS
HAVE A “STINK” TO THEM
JULY 20, 2005: One late night in Texas, 51-year-old
Kathleen Wynne did something she never thought she
would consider: She jumped into a dumpster.
An ordinary citizen who had become concerned about
the integrity of Diebold voting machines, Wynne was
amazed to find hundreds of pages of documents in the
trash. Among them: internal notes and memos, planning
information, problems with equipment and customers,
price bid worksheets, staff bonuses, and financial
statements from Diebold Election Systems. It was early
July, just after second quarter financials, and the
Diebold elections division seemed to be cleaning house.
Wynne was a citizen volunteer then – she is now
a full-time investigator for Black Box Voting, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan 501c(3) consumer protection
group for elections.
Diebold, a company that boasts of its security, had
made no attempt to shred the documents, or protect
them in any way. Instead, the company was in the
habit of discarding its internal records in various
publicly available locations — an apparent violation
of the management requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act. The first batch of documents is posted here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...2197/4466.html
(We’ll come back to the document stash in a minute.)
DIEBOLD DENIES INVOLVEMENT IN GALLINA MONEY
In May, Black Box Voting broke the story of ACG Group,
LLC, which has been funneling money from Diebold into
the pockets of . . . someone.
The ‘G’ in ACG stands for Gallina – Pasquale “Pat”
Gallina. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Gallina
was caught giving $10,000 to the Franklin County
Republican Party, handed off through the Franklin
County Director of Elections. The Dispatch also
contains a report of a $50,000 donation by Gallina
to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s political
interests.
Diebold, according to the Akron Beacon Journal,
denies any involvement in the donations by Gallina,
pointing to “Celebrezze & Associates” and vowing
to fire that organization (set up by Anthony Celebrezze,
now deceased) if it is proved to have “provided the
check in the name of Diebold.”
Excerpts from the above news articles can be found here
(scroll down):
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...1954/7696.html
Let us now dissect the spin:
1. The money was flowing through ACG Group LLC.
A few dollars may also have wandered into Gallina’s
pocket through “Celebrezze & Associates,” but the large,
UNDISCLOSED cash was flowing through ACG Group LLC,
an entity Diebold has not uttered a word about.
2. Who in their right mind would write a check “in
the name of DIEBOLD?” According to the Dispatch story,
Gallina showed up at the Franklin County elections
office with a check in hand and said "I’m here to give
you $10,000. Who do I make it payable to?” Gallina
claims the money was his own.
However, another principal of ACG Group LLC is Juan
Andrade (the ‘A’ in ACG). Andrade told Black Box Voting
on videotape that Diebold money is paid to him directly,
and Diebold money also goes through ACG Group, for
purposes that are largely for “persuasion.” (click
the VIDEO camera picture at Black Box Voting (.ORG)
and select “Cook County Money Trail” to clips of
Andrade talking about Diebold and ACG Group)
More details of Andrade and Gallina and Ohio money
dealings can be found here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...1954/7638.html
99 PAGES OF NEW DOCUMENTS REVEAL MORE PROBLEMS
Diebold financial documents found by Black Box Voting
investigator Kathleen Wynne reveal questionable
payments, and show that some items may have been
untruthfully reported to government authorities.
A document, first published online by Black Box Voting
in July 2004, exposes large payments to entities
investigated for unusual payments to political figures.
Black Box Voting has identified a $144,000 payable to
“Lottery Services of Georgia,” which was one of 16
companies found to have received "pass-through"
payments from GTECH in a 1995 probe. The same document,
and others, show $20,000 per month payments to Andrade,
Gallina’s partner in the Diebold-funded ACG Group.
Accounts payable document:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/...s-payable1.pdf
Documents also show payments to California lobbying
firm Rose & Kindel, whose executive recently popped
up with an appointment in new California Secretary of
State Bruce McPherson’s administration. The payment,
over $45,000, does not match the amount reported by
Diebold for the same period (around $7,000).
http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytra...ndel-pymts.pdf
(copies of Diebold disclosures to California can be found here):
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...1954/4447.html
In another document, an executive memo, Diebold execs
admit to a culture of ethics problems, and you can
sense the gnashing of teeth as they describe trying
to explain to the Diebold audit committee about the
lying and obfuscating that went on during California
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley’s administration.
The memo states that this cost the company dearly,
resulting in a $3 million loss for the year.
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/...exec-memo1.pdf
A document from Coconino County, Arizona describes
refusal to pay Diebold’s bill due to quality problems
with the machines.
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/coconino.pdf
A hand-written note asks why voting machines originally
sold to Canada were re-sold as “new,” tracing serial
numbers to Mendocino County and LHS (a company that
services Diebold accounts in New England.)
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/...-sold-used.pdf
Note that another voting organization,
http://www.countthevote.org, has unearthed other
devastating documents revealing specific failures
in Georgia in 2002.
Additional information about problems with Georgia’s
Diebold touch-screens, and links to The Count the Vote
documents, can be found here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums...1954/7646.html
The GEMS central tabulator program has been pummeled
by computer programmers for its flawed, hack-friendly
design. Documents found by Black Box Voting show
flabbergasting pricing for GEMS.
(Click here to see $325,000 price quote for GEMS
on the bid worksheet for Sacramento County, California):
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/...-estimates.pdf
For a company that sells its voting system to unions
(especially the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers), both security flaws and union-bashing tactics
should give union members a moment of pause.
Latest security failures outlined in this one-sheet: http://www.bbvdocs.org/general/...ort-1sheet.pdf
Union-squashing tactics shown in this planning sheet:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/...n-busting1.pdf.
(See page 3, plans to “research Teamsters Local 38 as to
finances, misconduct etc).
Additional documents, and analysis of the current
ones, will appear at http://www.blackboxvoting.org
throughout this week.
Folks, it is YOUR tax dollars that pays for these
shenanigans. Diebold recently achieved statewide
touch-screen sales for Mississippi, Utah and Ohio.
We may not win this battle by being “polite” and
“working within the system.” The system has been
broken for some years now.
We need to rekindle our confidence as Americans –
Kathleen Wynne, an ordinary citizen, has shown
that simple actions can have lasting repercussions.
It sometimes seems that we have an inferiority
complex – instead of believing in our own innate
good judgement, we continue to “leave it up to
the experts.”
It is the experts who got us into this mess. It
is the experts who certified Diebold and the other
machines (see http://www.blackboxvoting.org.BBVreport
for a devastating technical report showing just how
flawed these systems are.) It is the “experts” who
gave us the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). With this
kind of help, maybe we need to go back to basics.
To participate in discussions of your local elections,
and these issues, make friends with the “FORUMS” tab
on our home page: http://www.blackboxvoting.org.
Let us hear from you. Together, let’s fight this beast.
* * * *
All investigations, actions, and the Web site itself
are funded solely by citizen donations.
To donate: Send check to 330 SW 43rd St Suite K, PMB 547,
Renton WA 98055 or donate by credit card:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
* * * *
NEWS REPORTERS:
Contact info – 425-793-1030, 206-354-5723, or 206-335-7747
bev@blackboxvoting.org or Kathleen@blackboxvoting.org
On-Topic: I know basically everyone here figured out the election was stolen, but this comment is just for a couple of those "bright heads" who I thought it would deserve a simple explanation.
Paul & Jimmo,
You are like watching two children going around in circles about things that are irrelevant.
Lets talk about the counting of the votes.
You claim, **Oh but there was no conspiracy no stolen votes** without any evidence or facts whatsoever. There was a conspiracy, that went into action days before the election too.
http://www.democrats.org/a/2005...dal-ridden.php
Surprise surprise!! It happened in Ohio, Florida and some other states. Bush donors who raised money illegally also worked on the BOE and encountered the most **errors and run fraud** of the election.
So wait, could it be an impossible thing and the exit polls are off?
http://www.expertclick.com/News...l&ID=9474
Nope because the exit poll interviews for Kerry decrease and go **down** , instead of up if the over-sampling theory was correct which it isn’t.
But where were your votes on election day, why was it so easy to steal?
Well its this simple: **all of the strange irregular vote counts have happened on straight tickets**
http://www.cybersapian.com
Senators, unheard of judges and other residents counted as votes but president did not or defaulted somehow over to Bush.
Now, let’s go by the exit polls. 60% turned out claiming on their exit poll slips, they had voted for Kerry.
Their actual vote though did not reflect the affidavits. Instead, their actual vote showed up as an undervote or overvote in basically more than 100 counties across the country.
http://www.votersunite.org/info...wmessup-17.asp
http://www.votersunite.org/info...wmessup-01.asp
Straight-democratic tickets were "accidentally" not programmed to count, what an error! On top of that nearly all of them defaulted to Bush or nothing, because some Clint Curtis type patches were used and the count was inaccurate.
So where did thousands of these straight-ticket votes go to and how’d they get there?
Easy: They were manipulated by BOE members to be transferred into the Bush column and the rest showed up as errors which never counted at all.
link
Stolen election finished. All they had to do was filter out straight-ticket votes, and switch a few over to the king!
There goes all your exscuses, sorry to say.
Doug E.
I had an idea for a novel. Its working title was "Coming Full Circle." But I gave up on it.
Here was the plot line: In 1996 a Republican owns a company called "Election Software & Systems" (I was going to change that to "Tricky Election Software"). He sells his new-fangled election machines to his home state of Nebraska (I was changing that to Arkansas). He then runs for the Senate.
He’s behind in the polls to a popular Democrat all along, but on Election Day he wins. It’s called an "amazing upset." Nobody questions whether the election machines he himself sold to the state might have been rigged in his favor.
Four years later a candidate of his own party runs for president. He’s a man with marginal intelligence whose own brother was regarded within his family as the only one with presidential qualifications. His opponent has been vice president for eight years, during which time the economy boomed. But somehow, with the help of more "malfunctioning" electoral machines like those that decided the Nebraska race in 1996, the dumb guy from Texas is declared the winner. Most of the problems with his election are centered in Florida, where his brother just happens to be governor. It’s later shown conclusively that the other guy really won, and that massive fraud had taken place.
Four years later, after a terrorist attack on New York City and Washington that the dumb president had been warned about and none nothing to prevent, which was then used to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign country that had nothing to do with the attack, the dumb guy runs for re-election. He paints his opponent as a sissy, even though the opponent had been a Vietnam war hero and he himself had dodged the draft.
The dumb guy wins again, this time because the vote in Ohio was rigged. The head of Diebold, a voting-machine and tabulating-machine company based in Ohio (I changed the name to "Toehold"), had promised to "deliver the state" for the dumb guy. The state is later exposed as a cesspool of corruption, electoral and otherwise, so I decided to leave it as Ohio in the book.
But after the election, guess what happens? The company that started all the vote fraud business and elected the guy to the Senate, sues Ohio because Toehold got all the state’s election business! And, during the discovery process for the lawsuit, all the crookedness is revealed! People in Ohio go to jail and the dumb president is forced to resign to avoid impeachment for fraud.
Sound like a good novel? I thought so, but my agent said it was too fantastic to be believed. So I threw the manuscript out. Guess I’ll have to try a Harry Potter satire instead.
Now I think I understand a little better why Sherole Easton has been the only boe member to come forward, or one of few. Six figures (basically)? That’s big money. That can buy a lot of loyalty. Geez, I figured they got paid nothing or peanuts.
How do you feel about that, Ohio? You pay the guy six figures and a disaster ocurrs like the machine misallocation, on his watch, that causes people to stand in line up to 8 hours to vote and he still has his job?
But Sherole loses hers?
I guess I’d be surprised except that that’s how it seems to work anymore. Look at Bush. The more that goes wrong the more job security?
Subj: Americans like to pay alot of money to government to get ripped off and have the laws violated
Choose: You want more integrity at a cheaper price; or you want more of the same?
America needs to fucus on results, not in getting "whatever cruddy service" they are thrown at for such an outageous cost/price.
The real problem is the high-priced management fees/salares paid to those who surround themselves with crooks, incompetents, and people willing to violate their freely chosen professional standards. [ More . . . ]
I can see it now: Outsource the details overseas because it "costs too" much to pay American workers? Ha!
The $97K annual salary is excessive, on par with th e$160K salary for FAA controllers. It would be appropriate if the annual salary was $30K, and included periodic no-notice audits by either political party. Some could do a better job for $30K.
I wonder why this comment board is as wide as Damschroder’s trousers. Oops – not supposed to comment on his girth – as wide as Damschroder’s drawers (desk drawers, that is, nice and wide for holding the Diebold payoff checks).
Maybe someday somebody with some authority will realize the right thing to do is to start locking up the crooks. Start at the bottom (w Damschroder’s ilk) or at the top (in the WH) but locking them up is what we need; eh i guess it will probably be a lust-for-power-driven greedy coup. But there’s still hope that someone in high places was brought up by their parents to do the right things and not side with those already in power… Fitzgerald, you out there?
Oh, thank you, NewJesus, I thought it was my computer! Yeah, why IS this thing wider than Damschroder’s drawers, anyway??!!!
Unbelievable.
This is year… what, 229 of the USA? And elections are more controversial, corrupt, and undemocratic now than they were the first time through?
I feel really sad.
So, this is what the penalty is for possibly swinging a presidential election with fraud??? That’s what happens when the Republicans control the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court (7 of 9 justices were appointed by Republicans, the so-called "Liberal Supreme Court").
Stealing American citizens right to vote, is a fine.
Can we stick to comments about Damschroder’s actions and avoid attacking how he looks? There’s plenty in his actions and the consequences that deserve comment.
Can civil servants be given a "bonus"? Is there some way the money he was docked could be legally funnelled back to him?
Or maybe, like Katherine Harris, he’ll be given a "promotion".
Is he elected or appointed to his current position?
jpentz #4
BB’s book revealed this info about the Urosevich brothers two or more years ago, and others may have been on to this before then. (Harris says it was Lynn Landes who first alerted her to the electronic voting issue.)
Thank you, whoever altered Damschroder’s drawers.
Brad, keep the Rove story on your blog. It’s cycling off blogs, because of the London bombings and the Supreme Court nomination. I saw on Lou Dobbs, that there’s some important memo that Colin Powell had on Air Force One, on the trip to Africa, that might be important.
What’s the spin from O’HannityBaugh on the Rove deal?
Here’s why Damschroder still has his job. I have this scenario from a source who asked for confidentiality, and bloggers never divulge their sources.
Bush was talking to Condi and Rummy in the Oval Office just after the election. Here’s what happened.
CONDI: Mr. President, a German newspaper just wrote that your election was rigged.
BUSH: Damn Schroeder!
CARD (entering): Mr. President, a man from Ohio is on the phone for you.
BUSH: Damn Schroeder!
CARD: No. Noe.
BUSH: Don’t contradict me, you disloyal ass!
CARD: I said Noe. Not Damschroder.
BUSH: I heard what you said! And Schroeder’s a left-wing creep!
RUMMY: Calm down, everyone. Condi?
BUSH: No, I gave up sweets.
CONDI: Mr. President, maybe I should go to Germany.
BUSH: Damn Schroeder!
CARD: Noe, he’s still on the phone. What do I tell him?
BUSH: Who’s on the phone?
CARD: I told you. Noe. From Ohio.
BUSH: You mean Ney? The congressman?
CARD: No. Noe.
RUMMY: It’s Ney.
BUSH: Ney and Noe mean the same thing. It’s like a negative word. Don’t you understand that, Andy?
CARD: No.
RUMMY: Bob Ney. The congressman?
CARD: Nay, it’s Noe.
CONDI: I could tell Schroeder how much I like bratwurst and liberty cabbage.
RUMMY: You mean sauerkraut?
BUSH: He is one hell of a sour kraut. Damn Schroeder!
CARD (into phone): Noe, the president doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants to damn Schroeder instead.
Did you know Matt Damschroder’s 23 year old wife left him a little while ago for another man?