The BRAD BLOG has long endeavored to fight back against the disinformation being put forward by the GOP “voter fraud” charlatans and fraudsters contending that massive fraud is being carried out by voters at the polls, requiring the institution of disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place which would result in some 21 million Americans being unable to cast their legal votes, according to the League of Women Voters and most other serious experts on these matters.
Once again, a story out of Kentucky helps us highlight that it’s election insiders, not voters themselves, who are, by far, the greatest threat to the integrity of elections.
We reported early last year on the passel of election officials in Clay County, KY, arrested for buying and selling votes, manipulating ES&S electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, and otherwise fixing elections from 2002 to 2006.
As their January 19 trial date nears, more motions are being filed by federal prosecutors. The latest, filed last week, alleges that two of the top officials charged — one, a circuit court judge and the other, the county school Superintendent — had been fixing elections for decades before their recent indictments…
Bill Estep (the reporter who has owned this story locally since it broke last year) at Lexington’s Herald-Leader reported on New Years Day:
R. Cletus Maricle, a longtime judge, and former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams began working with drug dealers more than 20 years ago to buy votes and control local politics, according to a court motion filed this week.
In a 1983 race for circuit judge, for instance, Adams gave drug dealer Kenneth Day $30,000 to buy votes for one candidate, while Maricle bought votes for the opposing candidate, the motion claims.
“During Election Day, Maricle asked Day how much money it would take to get him to go home,” the motion says.
Two years later, Maricle and Adams bought votes for the same candidate for magistrate, and Day helped, according to the court document.
Estep offers more details on the long-running scam, and the federal prosecutors’ plans for holding these democracy-hating jerks accountable.
Attorneys for both of them, of course, deny all of the charges, claim that witnesses have lied, etc. But one of those charged, the county election directory, has already pleaded guilty and detailed how the long-running vote buying/selling scheme had been run with meetings in his garage and pools of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash collected to affect (largely) Republican primary elections in Clay County.
Clay is one of the poorest — and most Republican — counties in the state, and has been the scene of numerous federal crackdowns over the past several years in which high-ranking local officials, including the mayor, have been busted for all manner of criminality including narcotics trafficking and more.
As we noted in our coverage of the Clay County arrests last year, one of the most notable aspects of the allegations — at least to readers of The BRAD BLOG, if not the denialists in the e-voting industry — was the description of how electronic touch-screen voting systems made by ES&S were directly manipulated by election officials who would mis-instruct voters on how to use them in such a way that they’d be able to later change the intended votes before they were officially “cast” on the unverifiable electronic systems.
ES&S is the nation’s (and the world’s) largest voting machine manufacturer, and the type of systems manipulated in Clay County are used widely across the nation, despite numerous system failures in election after election, such as votes flipping and/or disappearing. We can now add the concern that they may be easily manipulated by election officials, directly from the voting booth, with few or no safeguards to keep that from happening.
ES&S recently purchased its next largest competitor, Premier Election Solutions, the new name given to the tarnished election division of Diebold, Inc., in 2007. That merger, resulting in ES&S taking control of some 70 to 80% of Americans’ votes, is being investigated by the U.S. Dept. of Justice on anti-trust grounds, as well as in 14 states, and challenged in court by its smaller competitor Hart InterCivic. The U.S. Senate is set to hold hearings on the merger early this year as well.
That hasn’t stopped ES&S from moving forward, full speed ahead with the takeover.
A recent visit by The BRAD BLOG to the former head quarters of Diebold/Premier in Allen, TX, reveals that nearly all signs of the former company have been removed, in favor of the new boss…same as the old boss…
Thank you Brad. Addressing the issue of vote rigging be it an individual and or perhaps someone tied to a private electronic voting machine corporation for example, who is given the right to count the American vote is daunting problem in itself.
Is this or is this not compounded by the fact that each State’s city, district, or county has a different way of holding elections, counting votes, and the placing people into this coveted role as an Election Official as opposed to 1 nationally recognized method?
Then there is the 3rd issue I personally have a problem with and that is the fact that most all elections of importance, major party candidates, and mass media press coverage are all financed by the US ruling class’s big corporations.
An example of this vulgar display of this power was the only anti-war Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich being complete blacked out of the nationally televised debates.
It is my opinion that the self-serving private interests of these corporate agendas be it a multi-national bank, credit card company, oil or coal company or “death” contractors (gun and bomb makers) ARE NOT the interest of the MAJORITY of American voters.
Corporate held elections produce corporate results. I think this is a serious another serious flaw in the current US system of election that need immediate overhaul if the WE THE PEOPLE are to ever take control of their own elections.
Denying someone the right to vote is reason, punishable by execution.
Bring it on.
Social engineering the vote by misinforming the uneducated to cast an incomplete or non registered ballot. Coming in after the fact to alter the incomplete ballot before finalizing it.
Social engineering by corrupt insiders who know how to take advantage in a weakness inherent in this voting system.
Corrupt insiders and an ignorant and blindly trusting electorate.
It’s the American way.
why aren’t the corporate news reporting this?
Brad, check out this story. An ES&S lobbyist admitted to fixing ballots in a Green Party primary in New York so that a Republican won their cross-endorsement.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/lo...Jc3iFSZDvYMNcJ
And to think, all these years I missed out on all that Hillbilly Heroin in exchange for my vote…
This should be considered treason if it is not already. The problem is at the top and bottom. We will not have justice in this country until we have a Supreme Court that is not fixed. We must impeach and remove all members who voted that the vote should not be counted in Florida. We should even think about reversing decisions made by Bush because he was an illegitimate president.
If I’m required to have a photo ID in order to pilot a 747 then why shouldn’t I be required to have a photo ID in order to vote?
#8 is that a joke? I don’t get it.
As for the story… DECADES? That means it went on long before e-voting, but it just goes to show how greed for money and power corrupts our political system, from the poorest county officials to the highest offices in the land. Where there is motive and opportunity, there is graft and corruption. How to remove the motive is the problem- how do you get criminals to stop committing crimes when crime pays so well?
The free and secure vote is the hallmark of a democratic society, that it is placed in the hands of a for profit corporation is a travesty.
We will never be able to trust election results as long as the real potential for abuse exists.
At the very least voting for national offices should be hand marked and hand counted.
GBD asked @ 1:
A case can certainly be made for the above. However, our Constitution is set up to allow states to determine their own means of running elections. It would take a Constitutional amendment to change that, and I’m not sure that’d be a very good idea, even if it wasn’t next to impossible to do. For one reason, such a “nationally recognized method” would likely be put into place (or at least signed off on by) a President. And let’s say that President is someone like George W. Bush. Do you want him, in one fell swoop, to determine how elections will be run in the U.S.A.? I suspect that question likely answers itself.
I’d move that one up to number 2, if I were you (actually, number 1, though media reform is a definite contender there as well!)
So long as corporations are allowed to drown out the “free speech” of everyone else, we the people will continue to get screwed. So all we have to do is sit back, and wait for those who benefit from that system (the elected officials, for example) to reform that system, and all will be well. 🙁
DeeCee asked @ 4:
Because Republicans aren’t complaining about it.
Colin James asked @ 9:
For one, start treating election manipulation as a crime. Everywhere. Create criminal penalties for the disenfranchisement of even one voter. And then enforce it. That might be a nice start, anyway.
How can any election be legitimate without proper identification? I have to prove who I am with a photo ID to use a credit card, but not to vote for elected officials?
Every state that offers state ID cards also has a ‘hardship clause’ so you can get an authorized ID for free if you say you can’t pay the $20 or less they usually charge. How does that disenfranchise anyone?