ASSOCIATED PRESS HAS DIRECT ACCESS
TO VOTE COUNTING COMPUTERS ON ELECTION NIGHT
HOW PRIVATE COMPANIES CONTROL THE VOTE TALLIES
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
When the polls closed in Chicago, American Free Press was at the Cook County clerk’s office to see how the secretive private company that operates the voting machines in America’s third-largest city actually controls the counting of the votes.
CHICAGO, Illinois – The morning after Election Day, the Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards promised his party and the nation that the Democrats would “make sure that every vote counts, and that every vote is counted.”
Later in the day, as the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Forbes Kerry, conceded defeat to George W. Bush, his 9th cousin and fellow “Bonesman” from Yale’s elite secret society, The Order of the Skull & Bones, he said: “In America, it is vital that every vote count.”
Despite their promise that “every vote would be counted,” Kerry and Edwards conceded defeat before some 170,000 – 250,000 provisional ballots from the state of Ohio, which could have changed the outcome of the election, had been counted.
Precisely as the public has been led to expect, the national tally of Electoral College delegates resulted in a nearly 50-50 split and it came down to the “swing state” of Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes, to give the election to George W. Bush.
But how were the votes actually counted across the nation on November 2?
And why was Ohio the crucial state, as Florida was in 2000, in giving the Republicans the White House?
VOTING IN CHICAGO
On Election Day, voters in Cook County (Ill.) were among the 60 million Americans who voted with machines made by Election Systems & Software, a secretive and private company based in Omaha, Nebraska.
ES&S, as its known, calls itself “the world’s largest and most experienced provider of total election management solutions.” According to the company’s own figures, 42 percent of all registered voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on Election Day.
ES&S sells its “end-to-end election management suite of solutions” to replace traditional voting methods � � and election officials � � with what it calls “‘one-stop-shop’ full service election coordination from start to finish.”
In Ohio, nearly every county uses such “end-to-end” electronic voting systems provided by ES&S or Triad Governmental Systems, Inc., a smaller company based in Xenia, Ohio. In some Ohio counties the two companies work together.
Triad, the largest provider of voting machines in Ohio, operates elections in nearly half of the counties of Ohio. Triad, like ES&S provides a “Total Election Management System,” which includes its Voter Information System (V.I.S.) and its ballot tabulation program.
Triad, is a family run company that grew out of Rapp Systems Corp., and is run by Brett A. Rapp and Dwayne A. Rapp, sons of the company founder Tod A. Rapp, who is an active supporter and generous donor to the Republican Party.
ES&S has similar well documented ties to the Republican Party, including partial ownership by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R.- Neb.), who has been elected to office with machines operated by a company he is part owner of.
This means that ES&S and Triad directly operate voting machines or tabulate the votes in 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Diebold Election Systems, which provides voting machines in two Ohio counties is run one of the two brothers who started ES&S.
What this means for American voters is that on Election Day, ES&S, a private and secretive company, is managing everything about the voting process, our most cherished democratic franchise. ES&S controls every phase of the voting process, from voter registration, the printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the votes, and the final reporting of the results – for 60 million Americans in 47 states.
Four years after first revealing the flaws inherent in the insecure ES&S electronic voting machines used in Cook County, the Precinct Ballot Counter (PBC) Model 2100, American Free Press went to the county clerk’s office to observe how ES&S controls the counting of the votes for America’s third largest city, Chicago, and the suburban area around it.
Like most electronic voting machines the PBC 2100 reads and processes the data punch card that is the ballot in Cook County. Each precinct machine is part of a computer network and linked to a central computer via modem, which makes the entire network insecure. Similar insecure electronic voting systems are now used in nearly every county in America.
Scott Burnham, spokesman for the county clerk, informed me that the vote count is open to the public and that press credentials would not be required. Shortly after arriving, I ran into Burnham and David Orr, the county clerk, in the hallway.
Although I had arrived just shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m., I was virtually the only member of the public or the press that had come to observe the vote county except for a couple Associated Press (AP) reporters in the far corner of the room. They were busy setting up their laptop to the ES&S computer in the backroom, which provided them with “direct feed” of the results. This direct access to the mainframe computer is like the modem, a communication line with the central counting computer; information can flow in both directions.
I was surprised to see so few people attending such an important event in such a big city. In France, scores of citizens watch the vote count in each little polling station.
When the results started coming in, I was surprised to see the AP “reporter” reading a novel. Then I realized that her laptop was doing the communicating for her.
When I went to talk to the AP reporter, Burnham quickly appeared and told me to leave her alone. “You should talk to AP,” he said.
“She is AP,” I replied.
“She just works for AP,” he said.
Clearly the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe computer was something Burnham did not want me to know about or discuss. Well aware that I am opposed to electronic voting machines Burnham, a county worker, went out of his way to protect the AP “reporter” and prevent one reporter from speaking with another during a public event. This is something I have never seen happen before.
Later, Dane Placko, a local reporter for the Fox News network, told AFP that “Fox also gets direct feed.”
Any actual counting of the votes by citizens is very rare in the United States today, except for a few counties in Montana and other states where paper ballots are still hand-counted. In most counties voters’ ballots are treated as input data to be processed through computer systems controlled by private companies like ES&S.
In Cook County the ballot is inevitably a cluttered punch card with nearly 100 votes. After voting for the president and vice-president, a senator, and a congressman, the voter has to wade through pages of choices to vote for some 80 local officials, from the sanitation board to the state’s general assembly. Every voter also has to vote on choosing or retaining nearly 80 judges. For most voters these are simply pages and choices of unfamiliar names and officials that have to be voted.
Rather than simplifying the ballot and holding separate elections for national and local officials, as is done in most countries, Cook County keeps the ballot extremely long and complicated. Officials who support electronic voting systems give the complexity of the ballot as the main reason why voting machines are necessary – because it would take too much time to count the votes manually.
As I voted, I could hear that every ballot that was fed into the ES&S machine registered as an “undervote,” as did mine. It is important to note that the Illinois State Board of Elections refused to approve the PBC 2100 for use in Illinois because it does not correctly count over- and under-voted ballots. The machine is used in Cook County because a judge overruled the board of elections.
THE SECRETIVE ES&S
After calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha and Chicago, I can say it is the most secretive company I have ever come across. In August, I visited ES&S company headquarters on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha.
Although the company says it is the largest voting machine company in the United States, they were unable to provide a single page of information about their company − or their products. Even the ownership of the company is a closely-guarded secret.
I visited on a summer afternoon and asked to meet Todd Urosevich, one of the two brothers that founded the company. Although Todd was on the premises, for more than an hour he could not be reached and there was no one who could answer any questions about the company.
Bob and Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark in the early 1980s. Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, a competitor of ES&S and the second largest U.S. manufacturer of electronic voting machines.
Together, the computerized ballot scanners and touch-screen voting machines systems made by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent of all votes cast in the recent U.S. presidential election.
As ES&S had no media relations person available and Todd Urosevich was obviously not willing to be interviewed, the company’s chief financial officer Tom O’Brien was chosen to deal with me. O’Brien, clearly displeased with my visit and questions, however, assumed a hostile attitude and simply refused to provide any information about the company.
ELECTION NIGHT IN CHICAGO
Although I was ill on Election Day, I knew I had to go to the county clerk’s office to observe “counting” of the vote. It is, after all, the only “counting” open to the public. What I saw in Chicago, however, only made me more nauseous.
The only “vote count” the press or public can observe in Chicago is data from the central computer being projected onto screens. The opening screen read: ES&S Automatic Election Returns; Release 35; Under License to the City of Chicago; Serial No. 0004; Copyright 1987.
Carl Zimmerman, technical supervisor for the clerk’s office, said that the computer and programmers that ran the system were in the back, “In the ES&S room,” he said.
At 7 p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk’s computer staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor, where the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind him was Rick Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the presentation of the first results.
Thurman seemed quite surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S. He said that the company had about 6 engineers running the computer in the back room. He then checked himself, saying he had already said too much. On the fifth floor I found his wife in the press room monitoring results from a monitor with another ES&S employee.
Later I asked Lin who was actually operating the computer that was generating the results being shown on the monitors. “ES&S is running the mainframe for all of this,” Lin said pointing to the television displays.
In the press room in the back I noticed stacks and stacks of boxes containing “Votamatic” voting machines and “pre-punched” ballots printed by ES&S of Addison, Texas, for the different precincts in Cook County. In the rear hallway behind the press room was the ES&S room. Only ES&S personnel were allowed into the room.
When I poked around in the hallway and peeked in the door of the ES&S room an armed marshal and ES&S employee quickly appeared. In no condition for a confrontation, I quickly made myself scarce.
On the way out, I met a couple reporters from CLTV, a local cable channel of WGN. One of the reporters asked about my interest in the Chicago tallies. I said I was interested to see how a private company runs elections in Chicago.
Seemingly unaware of how ES&S operates elections in Cook County, I explained the basics. “I’ve observed elections across Europe,” I added, “from France and Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere in Europe voting is done on paper ballots that are counted by the citizens – except Holland, where they use touch-screen voting machines.”
Obviously uncomfortable with this discussion the reporter responded, “I’m glad I’m not in Serbia. I don’t mind if a machine counts the votes.”
When I said that that’s not the way votes are counted in a democracy, she countered, “America is not a democracy; it’s a republic.”
That is true, and we don’t have democratic elections in America, we have Republican-controlled elections.
[Pictured below: Christopher Bollyn, at ES&S]
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