Stop H.I.G. Owned EVoting Machines From Giving Romney The White House


Will Ohio's H.I.G.-Owned E-Voting Machines Give Romney the White House?
By Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, OpEdNews
15 October 12


 http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13988-will-ohios-hig-owne

Electronic voting machines owned by Mitt Romney's business buddies are set to
count the votes in Cincinnati could decide the 2012 election.

The narrative is already being hyped by the corporate media. As Kelly O'Donnell
reported for NBC's Today Show on Monday, October 8, Ohio's Hamilton County is
"ground zero" for deciding who holds the White House come January, 2013.

O'Donnell pointed out that no candidate has won the White House without carrying
Ohio since John Kennedy did it in 1960. No Republican has EVER won the White
House without Ohio's electoral votes.

As we document in the e-book WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION
(www.freepress.org) George W. Bush got a second term in 2004 thanks to the
manipulation of the electronic vote count by Ohio's then-Secretary of State J.
Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell served as the co-chair of the state's committee to
re-elect Bush/Cheney while simultaneously administering the election.

The widespread use of electronic voting machines from ES&S, and of Diebold
software maintained by Triad, allowed Blackwell to electronically flip a 4%
Kerry lead to a 2% Bush victory in the dead of election night. ES&S, Diebold and
Triad were all owned or operated by Republican partisans. The shift of more than
300,000 votes after 12:20 am election night was a virtual statistical
impossibility. It was engineered by Michael Connell, an IT specialist long
affiliated with the Bush Family. Blackwell gave Connell's Ohio-based GovTech the
contract to count Ohio's votes, which was done on servers housed in the Old
Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thus the Ohio vote tally was
done on servers that also carried the e-mail for Karl Rove and the national
Republican Party. Connell died in a mysterious plane crash in December, 2008,
after being subpoenaed in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit focused
on how the 2004 election was decided (disclosure: we were attorney and plaintiff
in that suit).

Diebold's founder, Walden O'Dell, had vowed to deliver Ohio's electoral
votes-and thus the presidency-to his friend George W. Bush. That it was done in
part on electronic voting machines and software O'Dell happened to own (Diebold
has since changed hands twice) remains a cautionary red flag for those who
believe merely winning the popular vote will give Barack Obama a second term.

This November, much of the Ohio electorate will cast its ballots on machines
again owned by close cronies of the Republican presidential candidate. In
Cincinnati and elsewhere around the state, the e-voting apparati are owned by
Hart Intercivic. Hart's machines are infamous for mechanical failures,
"glitches," counting errors and other timely problems now thoroughly identified
with the way Republicans steal elections. As in 2004, Ohio's governor is now a
Republican. This time it's the very right-wing John Kasich, himself a
multi-millionaire courtesy of a stint at Lehman Brothers selling state bonds,
and the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, on whose Fox Network Kasich served as a late
night bloviator. Murdoch wrote Kasich a game-changing $1 million check just
prior to his winning the statehouse, an electoral victory shrouded in electronic
intrigue. The exit polls in that election indicated that his opponent, incumbent
Democrat Ted Strickland, had actually won the popular vote.

Ohio's very Republican Secretary of State is John Husted, currently suing in the
US Supreme Court to prevent the public from voting on the weekend prior to
election day. As did Blackwell and Governor Robert Taft in 2004, Husted and
Kasich will control Ohio's electronic vote count on election night free of
meaningful public checks or balances

Hart Intercivic, on whose machines the key votes will be cast in Hamilton
County, which includes Cincinnati, was taken over last year by H.I.G. Capital.
Prominent partners and directors on the H.I.G. board hail from Bain Company or
Bain Capital, both connected to Mitt Romney. H.I.G. employees have contributed
at least $338,000 to Romney's campaign. H.I.G. Directors John P. Bolduk and
Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers, as is former Bain and H.I.G.
manager Brian Shortsleeve.

US courts have consistently ruled that the software in electronic voting
machines is proprietary to the manufacturer, even though individual election
boards may own the actual machines. Thus there will be no vote count
transparency on election night in Ohio. The tally will be conducted by Hart
Intercivic and controlled by Husted and Kasich, with no public recourse or
accountability. As federal testimony from the deceased Michael Connell made
clear in 2008, electronically flipping an election is relatively cheap and easy
to do, especially if you or your compatriots programmed the machines.

So as the corporate media swarm through Ohio, reporting breathlessly from
"ground zero" in Cincinnati, don't hold your own breath waiting for them to also
clarify that the voting machines in what may once again be America's decisive
swing state are owned, programmed and tabulated by some of the Romney campaign's
closest associates.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S
2012 ELECTION? an e-book at  http://freepress.org/store.php#a2012.

Harvey Wasserman edits nukefree.org and co-writes KILLING OUR OWN: THE DISASTER
OF AMERICA'S EXPERIENCE WITH ATOMIC RADIATION. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED
EARTH is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior editor of www.freepress.org. Listen
to "Solartopia! Green-Power Hour" at www.talktainmentradio.com every Wednesday
from 8-9 p.m.
See also:
 http://freepress.org