BEV HARRIS, BLACK BOX VOTING - Robert Gates was on the board of directors of Vote Here, a strange little company that was the biggest elections industry lobbyist for the Help America Vote Act. Vote Here spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help ram HAVA through. And HAVA, of course, was a bill sponsored by by convicted Abramoff pal Bob Ney and K-street lobbyist buddy Steny Hoyer. HAVA put electronic voting on steroids.
Vote Here was a company shilling cryptographic solutions and filled with NSA types (another director was Admiral Bill Owens, another crony of Rummy, Perle and Wolfowitz. . .
For some reason, it was decided that I should be investigated in connection with [a reported] "hack" of Vote Here -- never mind that I can't remember how to change the password on my own laptop. Therefore I was interviewed by the Secret Service several times about this. Curiously, they never seemed to ask any questions about Vote Here, only my role in finding the Diebold files and publishing the Diebold memos.
This nonsense eventually culminated in a gag order and a letter from the U.S. Attorney to appear in front of a federal grand jury with information on all the visitors to the Black Box Voting Web site. . .
Attorney Lowell Finley went to bat for me on this. A reporter named George Howland from the Seattle Weekly also got wind of it. When it hit the press, and with Lowell Finley's help, their harassment of me stopped.
Vote Here never sold any voting machines that I can find, but apparently did set up some deals to embed its cryptography into some voting systems. We found memos in the Diebold trash about Vote Here's crypto-crap, and Maryland Director of Elections Linda Lamone shows up in Vote Here-related letters. Sequoia Voting Systems signed an agreement with Vote Here, but it's not clear to me whether they ever did anything about it. . .
I don't know about you, but I'd rather use a paper, pencil, and count by hand at the polling place than have former CIA director Robert Gates fooling around with my vote. But that's just me.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0611/S00178.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment