-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded message follows ------- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "lday0000" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date sent: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 18:52:30 -0000 Subject: [CIA-DRUGS] U.S. 2002 vote rigged?
Regarding the 2002 U.S. elections: Maybe the country turned 'right'. It is also possible that the voting machines were rigged. Do you know who owns the companies that provided the machines, the software and the technicians? You realize that with no paper trail no recounts are possible. For some reason no exit polling was done. Did you know the software program was a proprietary 'business secret'? It seems to me there was zero oversight. Countries like Canada or Japan don't allow computer voting machines because it is too easy to rig. One sophisticated hacker could rearrange your vote however he wanted--what's on the screen doesn't necessarily correlate with what's counted. An accountant told me this joke. Three accountants go in for a job interview. First question is: "What's 2 + 2?" Answer: "4". "Thank you, next"; "What's 2 + 2?" "4" "Thank you, next." "What's 2 + 2?" Answer: "What do you want it to be?" "You're hired." For a technical study of U.S. electoral machines this site [Bev Harris'] is interesting: http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html EG: ...Unfettered by any disclosure regulations about ownership or political affiliations, private individuals own the companies that control almost all the voting machines in America. Do the people who own them have conflicts of interest? We don't know. Do they employ anyone with a criminal record? We don't know. Because current vote-counting systems are not sufficiently protected from manipulation, and are getting less and less auditable, it is now very important to know who has access to the machines. There is no place for secrecy in our voting-counting system. Secret voting, yes. Secret vote-COUNTING, no; in fact, it's unconstitutional. For some inexplicable reason, the U.S. is rushing to eliminate the only physical record of the mark made by each voter, going to straight touch-screens with no paper trail. Canada doesn't allow this. Neither does Japan. Why are we so casually throwing away the only real audit trail that protects our vote? With touch-tone screens, we simply have no paper trail for millions of votes, with private, secret, and (according to computer security experts), insecure programming for vote-counting machines that invites tampering. It takes only ONE true believer with access to manipulate the counting code. Therefore, disclosure of ownership, flagging conflicts of interest, has become critical..." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mike Ruppert: (...) There was one other great message from this election. On Wednesday morning I watched a crawl on the bottom of the CNN news screen. It said, "Proprietary software may make inspection of electronic voting systems impossible." It was the final and absolute coronation of corporate rights over democracy; of money over truth; and of man's self-destructive fears over the best parts of the human heart. I note with irony the fact that much of the new software to resolve voting issues is either created by Microsoft and/or the companies that own and sell the voting machines, including one with investments from the Rothschild family. These are the same firms connected to the election debacle of 2000. Some even have Bush family connections. And here we see the final purpose of the 2000 Florida voting scandals: In order to prevent the same kind of hanging-chad confusion, we now have electronic machines so the problem won't occur again, and the results have been forever totally removed from public scrutiny. And wasn't it convenient that Voters News Service decided at the last minute that there would be no exit polling this year. Exit polling was a reliable standard against which the numbers from the voting machines could be compared... --(from FTW/www.copvcia.com) ______________ The Rothschild connection: (...) AJ=Alex Jones; GP=Greg Palast GP: Well, you know, the guy that ordered the privatization in Britain is a guy named Lord Wakeham, what a character. And he was on the audit committee of the Board of Directors of Enron. And yet, here's the guy, the guy who sold Enron the water system, sold Enron the electric system of Britain. And who was supposedly in charge of monitoring their books on their Board of Directors. AJ: But then again, he's the head of N.M. Rothschild. GP: And also, Wakeham, he's connected to most of the major international banks. Plus, he's actually a voting member of the House of Lords. So you know, he didn't miss a trick. So these are the guys who are making these wonderful decisions. Do I trust their decisions? Are they looking out for the interests of the average person? I have a few doubts about that... (...) ======================= hmmm, Rothschilds, there a name to make any conspiracy theorist flip his tin-foil hat. Googling into Lord Wakeham we get: from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,753177,00.html re: Rothschild connection, Enron and Lord [John] Wakeham (...) At the time, as chief [Margaret Thatcher era] whip, he was fixing the backbenchers. Later, as energy minister, he fixed the utilities. Two years after leaving that job, he became a non-executive director of Enron, which, when energy secretary, he had granted the right to build a gas-fired power station in Teesside. In 1995, shortly after sorting out a job at the PCC, he got fixed up with a directorship at the merchant bank, NM Rothschild, which, it emerged, he had personally appointed, as energy secretary, to advise on the privatisation of British Coal. It had also advised the electricity companies... --------------- That's pretty mainstream compared to this blunt Christian site: from: http://www.unitypublishing.com/Government/IMF.htm IMF / WORLD BANK DESTROYING COUNTRIES The World Bank - IMF is owned and controlled by NM Rothschild and 30 to 40 of the wealthiest people in the world. For over 150 years they have planed to take the world over through money. The former chief economist of the World Bank, Joe Stiglitz, was fired recently. He pointed out to top executives that every country the IMF/World Bank got involved in ended up with a crashed economy, a destroyed government, and sometimes in flames with riots. Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank would not comment on his dismissal. Before Joe Stiglitz was fired he took a large stack of secret documents out of the World Bank. These secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund reveal that the IMF required nations: 1. to sign secret agreements of 111 items 2. in which they agreed to sell off their key assets - water, electric, gas, etc. 3. in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved 4. in which they pay off the politicians billions of dollars to Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer of a countries fixed assets If they do not agree to these steps they are cut-off from all international borrowing. Today if can't borrow money in the international marketplace, no one can survive, whether you are people or corporations or countries. If that does not work they overthrow the government and plant lies about the former government and/or even rewrite history... [and, same site, specifically re Lord Wakeham]: Enron's Auditor - Lord Wakeham The men who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after. Lord Wakeham, who was on the audit committee of Enron, is the head of NM Rothschild. There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty Boards. And he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. In fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants in Britain. Enron owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what Lord Wakeham approved and then they gave him a job on the board. On top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. Lord Wakeham is supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts, but he is also the head of the board to regulate the media. Lord Wakeham is trying to pass laws in England where you can't own your own water. He can't be touched because he regulates the media... ++++++++++++++++++++++ Well, Lord Vader--oops, I mean Lord Wakeham, may not be the person you want counting your vote..so how about Senator Nagel? from: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00043.htm ...Then there is the remarkable (and largely untold) story of the ownership of the company that makes new electronic voting machines that were used crucially in Texas, Florida and Georgia in yesterday's poll. The McCarthy Group has been a primary owner of Election Systems & Software, including its predecessor, American Information Systems for more than a decade. Michael R. McCarthy is the current campaign Treasurer for Republican senator Chuck Hagel. Prior to his election, Republican Senator Hagel was president of McCarthy & Company. In fact, he was first elected while his own company was making the vote- counting machines. (See: Republicans, Corporate Players Make the Voting Machines http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00044.htm) (...) In a section of that article, entitled â??Secret Ballot â?? Secret Tally - Electronic Voting on Trialâ??, the author(s) goes on to state, â??The counting of 70% of our votes goes on inside a literal and figurative black box by a technical process that you have no legal right to inspect. The results from that black box are then counted by local election officials who send their results to the state, where they are later certified as accurate and honest. However, these election officials have no legitimate means of certifying that the results are indeed â??accurateâ?? and â?? honestâ??. In fact, in numerous interviews, we found that no individual at the state, county, city or township level has had any meaningful insight (or even a clear understanding) into the vote counting process at the crucial level of the election computers in each jurisdiction.â?? (1) â??When the polls close, the voting tallies feed out from the back of the machine on a strip of paper that looks like a cash register receipt. These slips are then sent to the county, the State and the media for further counting. In many heavily-populated areas, the Votomatic Punch cards or optical scan ballots are taken to a central counting site where they are fed into from 1 to 12 larger computers called tabulators at the rate of up to 1000 per minute.â?? (2) The computers which tabulate the votes cannot be examined by anyone with a direct interest in a fair election. Neither voters, nor poll workers, city clerks, county election supervisors, state elections directors or even federal election officials are permitted to view or examine the â??source codeâ??, the computer programming instructions (software) that direct the computers in the tabulation of the votes in all of the races. The â??source codesâ?? are deemed proprietary, i.e. a â??trade secretâ??, and hence the only people who are allowed to view or examine them are the companies that make the computers and their agents. [Isn't privatisation wonderful?] But this is not the half of it. Not only are we not able to examine the computer program which â??tabulatesâ?? our votes. We canâ??t even find out if there are felons or ex-felons working for (or owning or managing) the companies which produce the voting machines, election equipment and software. The major companies which make most of the equipment (and software) involved in the election process are private companies which are not required by law to disclose ownership information. In fact, research indicates that not only are there questions of criminal activity (vote fraud, obstruction of justice) on the part of present or past members of these firms, the ties of these companies to extreme right wing political operatives are becoming more and more apparent. (3) ...================ & this: from Talion.com (Bev Harris): Hagel [now Senator, R.] came to Omaha from Washington D.C., where he worked with the first George Bush Administration. In news articles by the Omaha World-Herald, Hagel said he was coming to Omaha to become president and partner in the McCarthy Group and Chairman of American Information Systems. In his congressional bio he is said to have come to Omaha "to prepare for running for office." The first thing he did was run American Information Systems, a vote-counting company. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign. [The tin-foil hats are really flipping now!] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Meanwhile, back in the mainstream: Antony Barnett and Jamie Doward Sunday January 13, 2002 The Observer Lord Wakeham, former Tory Energy Minister and now chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, is to appear before a United States Senate committee to explain his role in the £55 billion Enron collapse - the largest in US corporate history. The Observer has learnt that the Senate's governmental affairs committee has subpoenaed Wakeham and another 50 individuals to appear. Senators want to question Wakeham about his role as an Enron board director for the past eight years. In particular, they want to grill him over the part he played as a key member of two of the energy giant's board committees that were supposed to protect shareholders' interests and prevent any financial malpractice. The Senate committee's decision will be a huge embarrassment for the former Minister and leader of the House of Commons who was known as Margaret Thatcher's 'Mr Fix-It'. While he was Energy Secretary in 1990 he helped privatise the UK's electricity industry and gave consent for Enron to build Britain's largest private power plant on Teesside. In 1999 Tony Blair entrusted Wakeham with the job of investigating reform of the House of Lords. Since 1994, Wakeham has been a non-executive board director of Enron earning more than £80,000 a year from the company. He also owned almost 21,000 shares in the corporation worth £130,000 at their peak. Most crucially, Wakeham was a member of Enron's audit and compliance committee that was supposed to scrutinise its financial dealings. In particular, this committee was supposed to conduct annual reviews of the complex transactions between Enron and two partnerships set up by the company's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow. It is these two partnerships which are now the focus of inquiries by the US authorities, including a criminal investigation. The criminal probe focuses on allegations that these partnerships helped some Enron directors - not Wakeham - orchestrate a complex fraud by hiding billions of dollars of debt from Wall Street investors. The Enron crisis threatens to escalate into a major scandal for Bush following the disclosure of close contacts between members of his team and officials from the firm, which also donated large sums of money to key political leaders. Wakeham, who has refused to answer any questions from The Observer about his role at Enron, also faces questions over his job as chairman of another Enron board committee designed to protect shareholders' interests and guard against corporate wrongdoing. Wakeham earned £7,000 a year for chairing the nominating committee that was responsible for choosing independent non-executive directors. Since Enron's collapse the independence of these directors has been questioned after it emerged that a number of them had been given lucrative consultancy contracts on top of their director's pay. Damon Silvers, of the main US trade union organisation AFL-CIO which represents thousands of Enron employees, said: 'At best it appears Lord Wakeham was incompetent. He and the other independent directors bear a particular responsibility for the spectacular collapse of Enron.' When Enron filed for bankruptcy on 2 December, thousands of employees lost their jobs and billions of dollars when the company prevented them from selling shares. Executives, meanwhile, drew out more than $1bn in stock when the company was near its peak. In Washington, the scandal expanded yesterday. The Treasury was forced to reveal that Undersecretary of State, Peter Fisher, was repeatedly called by Enron's President, Greg Whalley, who, according to the government, pleaded for help in securing bank loans. The chairman of the executive committee of one of two banks backing Enron, Citicorp, is Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary to Clinton. It emerged yesterday that he, too, made representations to the current Treasury on the company's behalf, asking the administration to intervene. ================== more from www.talion.com Election Systems & Software (ES&S): * 1. Company founded by: Brothers Todd and Bob Urosevich. The brothers now run competing election companies (Todd is with ES&S, Bob is with Global Election Systems, now part of Diebold.) Together, these two companies count about two-thirds of the votes in America. ... * 2. Vested interests: ES&S was given its grubstake (while operating under the name American Information Systems) in 1984 when the billionaire Ahmanson family injected enough cash to get ahold of a 68 percent ownership. (2) This wealthy family has been instrumental in making the Republican Party take a hard right turn, pouring money into conservative Christian candidates and right-wing agendas.(3) They were instrumental in getting at least 24 conservatives into the California legislature; launching prop. 209, California's successful anti-affirmative action law; financing Prop. 22, California's effort to ban gay marriages; financing efforts to remove evolution from school curriculi; and financing the Chalcedon Institute, which reportedly believes in the death penalty for homosexuality and other "sins." The Ahmansons are heirs to the Home Savings of America fortune, which was the largest savings and loan association in the world during the rollicking 1980s (while the S&L scandals were taking place.) Howard Ahmanson is a major benefactor of the Christian reconstructionist movement, whose followers wish to turn certain tenets of the Bible into national law. [S&L money? Far right-wing wacko billionaires? If it wasn't so tragic, it would be comic.] * 3. Skating too close to criminal prosecutions and kickbacks...02/05/2002, The Baton Rouge Advocate reports that Arkansas Secretary of State Bill McCuen pleaded guilty to felony charges that he took bribes, evaded taxes and accepted kickbacks. Part of the charges related to election systems. Tom Eschberger, who became a Vice President for ES&S, took an immunity deal and testified against McCuen. And in Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice as running mate in 1998 was Sandra Mortham. According to the Tallahasee Democrat (10/6/2002) Mortham, was a paid lobbyist for ES&S and received a commission for every county that bought its touch-screen machines. Mortham says there was nothing improper about the deals, but Broward County Commissioner Ben Graber disagreed, alleging conflict of interest. And let's look at Alex Sheshunoff, from the BRC merger: He was sued by the SEC for manipulating the stock price of BRC using a technique called "marking the close." The web address of the SEC filing against Sheshunoff is http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/3437419.txt The Nebraska Problem * 4. The Nebraska Problem: Look at the documents, see the loop: ES&S, according to the Nebraska Elections Division, is the ONLY vote- counting company certified to sell machines in Nebraska. ES&S counts 80 percent of the votes; the remaining 20 percent are hand counts. ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy runs the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy is the Campaign Treasurer for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; The FEC designates Michael McCarthy as a Primary Campaign Committee for Candidate Chuck Hagel; and Chuck Hagel's financials list the McCarthy Group as an Asset, with his investment valued at $1-$5 million. (...) Other ES&S owners: In 1997-98 American Information Systems acquired Business Records Corp., a Texas-based election company originally called Cronus Industries. Twenty percent of the stock of the merged company was given to BRC owners. Among the owners of BRC/Cronus: Caroline Hunt, of the Hunt Oil family, through her investment group (Rosewood Financial Partners) Alex Sheshunoff, a financial data publisher The late P.E. Esping, formerly of Omaha, founded First Data Merchant Services Charter Oak Partners, an affiliate of Rothschild Realty Inc., which is an affiliate of Rothschild, Inc. (...) [Yeah, Rothschild Inc. Anti-democratic, anti-American, let these megalomaniacs own your voting record. They wouldn't *cheat* would they? After all, Lord Wakeham is a Lord; Lords don't cheat do they? Aristocracy is wonderful. 1776 was just a movie. Unfortunately 2002 is also a movie: The Night of the Living Dead.] ============ The rest are just press clippings from a variety of sources. E.S.S. is threatening to sue to get the talion site taken down. Maybe spreading this info around before it's too late is a safety precaution? 02/05/2002 The Baton Rouge Advocate In Arkansas, Secretary of State Bill McCuen pleaded guilty to felony charges that he took bribes, evaded taxes and accepted kickbacks. Part of the case involved Business Records Corp. [now merged into Election Systems & Software], a Dallas company that sold Arkansas computerized systems for recording corporate and voter registration records. Arkansas officials said the scheme involved...then-BRC employee Tom Eschberger...Eschberger got immunity from prosecution for his cooperation. Today, he's a top executive of ES&S [Eschberger became a Vice President of ES&S — see next sidebar]. In Louisiana, former Elections Commissioner Jerry Fowler is serving a five-year term in federal prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in another voting- machine scandal. ++++++++++++++++++++++ 12/11/2000 Los Angeles Times Merchants ply state and local government administrators with entertainment and campaign funds. In turn, understaffed election officials rely on sales representatives to explain the ever-more technical workings of the systems they oversee. Without binding regulations and with little oversight, these relationships breed disregard for protecting ballots, obtaining the best equipment and safeguarding public funds. At worst, close ties erode integrity. Culp knows it. He left a Maryland prison in September and lives in a Charlotte, N.C., halfway house, where he is ending a 30-month sentence for accepting 122 bribes and kickbacks worth more than $134,000 from January 1990 to March 1998. Voting machines he bought from the salesman who paid him off had enough problems that he wrote four letters of complaint even as he was taking the bribes. +++++++++++++++++++ 2/3/1999 Honolulu Star Bulletin [Full Story] Senate President Norman Mizuguchi was expected to announce details today of a Senate investigation into last year's election and the malfunction of ballot-counting machines in seven precincts. "This is what the United States is all about, and the people's right to vote and having this particular process free from any kind of irregularities is very important," Mizuguchi said. Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (D, Waianae), who is expected to be a leader of the investigation, said she wants answers about how decisions were made about the election process. "How did they manage to turn off the safeguards?" she asked...Late yesterday afternoon, Hanabusa met with officials from Election Systems & Software, which supplied the election machines and computers. Other states have had problems with equipment from the company Election Systems & Software: In Dallas, which uses the same precinct ballot-counting machine as Hawaii, 41,015 votes were initially missed. Several counties in Maryland that had used the company's machines for previous elections had problems with ballots that were improperly printed. +++++++++++++++++++++ 11/03/1999 The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA Almost a third of Norfolk's precincts could not tally voting results Tuesday because of malfunctioning vote-counting machines, leaving officials scrambling to do a recount that will affect every contested race in the city. "This is a bad situation," said Ann Washington, Norfolk's voter registrar...The affected machines showed totals of zero even though votes had been cast. Officials suspected that faulty computer chips were the cause and were unsure if the problem would be resolved before today. "Somehow, they lost their ability to count the votes," Edward O'Neal, vice chairman of the Norfolk Electoral Board said of the computer chips' programming. ++++++++++++++++++++++ 08/22/2002 Wichita Eagle (KS) Election reversed in Clay County The discovery of a computer glitch reversed one outcome from this month's primary elections in Kansas, and an unsuccessful candidate in another race has based his request for a special election on alleged technical difficulties. In Clay County, computer results from a County Commission primary showed challenger Roy Jennings defeating incumbent Jerry Mayo by 22 votes The hand recount, completed Tuesday, revealed Mayo as the winner -- and by a landslide, 540 votes to 175. In one ward, which Mayo carried 242-78, the computer had mistakenly reversed the totals. And in the absentee voting, which originally showed a 47-44 edge for Jennings, a hand count found Mayo winning 72- 19. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 11/14/2000 Pittsburgh Post Gazette City Councilwoman Valerie McDonald yesterday called for an investigation of voting machine irregularities at polling places in Lincoln-Lemington, Homewood and the East Hills last week, saying machines in the city's 12th and 13th wards and other predominantly black neighborhoods were malfunctioning for much of Election Day. McDonald said both machines at a Lincoln-Lemington polling place were out of service for the first three hours, driving away 50 voters. Several machines were in and out of service at 13th Ward polling places in Homewood and East Hills, smoking and spitting out jammed and crumpled paper and leaving poll workers to wait hours for repair by Allegheny County elections division workers. Workers in the polling places "strongly felt that the machines were intentionally programmed incorrectly ... and were sabotaged," McDonald said in a letter to Elections Director Mark Wolosik. (...) In the first election I witnessed in South Carolina (it was 1970, I believe), a voting machine broke down in one of the largest black precincts in Charleston. It was in the middle of the morning rush. There were no replacement machines available, and while a repairman worked on the problem for a couple of hours, several hundred African- Americans eventually left the precinct without getting the chance to vote. I became righteously indignant, as I often was in those days, but my Charleston friends were philosophical. It happens every election, they told me. And so it did. Never the same precinct. Never the same time of day. Never the same problem with the machine. But for many elections afterward, somewhere in Charleston on election day, a voting machine in a black precinct would break down for an hour or two. Once is an accident. Twice is incredibly bad luck. Three times or more is a plan. [more] +++++++++++++++++++++ 08/19/1998 The Kansas City Star Late Monday afternoon, Thornburgh's office told Neuenswander that canvassers had discovered a 3,000-vote discrepancy in the Douglas County vote tallies. The 3,000 votes brought Neuenswander's total within 24 votes of Bacon, who received 13,556 votes. The close vote might beg a re-count, but the deadline for such a request was noon Aug. 10. At the time Neuenswander had no idea he was missing 3,000 votes. He said the discovery was bittersweet. ``I don't really know how to react to it,'' he said Tuesday. ++++++++++++++++++ 02/18/2000 THE RECORD, Northern New Jersey About 75 percent of the voting machines in the city of Passaic failed to work when the polls opened on Election Day, forcing an undetermined number of voters to use paper ballots during the morning hours. An independent consultant who later examined the machines concluded the problem was due to sabotage, which has led a Democratic freeholder to refer the matter to the FBI. ++++++++++++++++ 04/07/1997 The Tampa Tribune Bob Stamper, a 10-year state attorney investigator, usually works on white-collar crime cases. But his investigation at the supervisor of elections office involves no crime. Rather, the probe is focusing on a ballot count that landed Republican Bruce L. Parker at the top of the heap election night, but later unseated him in favor of Democrat Marlene Duffy Young after a court-ordered hand recount. Todd Urosevich, a vice president of American Information Systems [now ES&S], which made Polk's troubled ballot-counting equipment, already has been interviewed by Stamper, and told Stamper his machines were not responsible for the miscount. +++++++++++++++++ 11/19/2001 Houston Chronicle "We have a problem where voters are being turned away from polls even though they have the proper identification," said Joe Householder, spokesman for the Brown campaign. "A potential reason may be that computers were down, but that is not an excuse. The law is pretty clear on this." A computer problem cut off access to the county's voter registration database for about one hour after polls opened Saturday afternoon, said Tony Sirvello, administrator of elections for the Harris County Clerk's Office. ++++++++++++++++++++ 04/29/2002 Network World Fusion Vivendi: Electronic vote may have been hacked An electronic vote at Vivendi Universal SA's shareholder meeting last Wednesday may have been hacked, throwing suspicion on shareholder votes at other companies using electronic voting technology, the company announced Sunday...A preliminary inspection of the equipment revealed no signs of tampering, Vivendi said. However, it said that a small team with a transmitter-receiver and detailed knowledge of the protocols used by the wireless voting system could have fraudulently manipulated the vote. +++++++++++++++++++ 02/11/2002 The San Francisco Chronicle Jones' investigation raised the specter of massive inaccuracies in the November 2000 vote count -- enough to put in question the election of some members of the Board of Supervisors...For instance, in precinct 3213 on Russian Hill, the city reported counting 328 ballots and 327 signatures were in the roster. But when state investigators opened the box for that precinct that city officials pulled from storage, they found only 170 ballots. In one precinct, the major discrepancies found by Jones seem to have existed on election night as well. In polling place 2214 in the Western Addition, the city counted 416 ballots, but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state found only 357 paper ballots. ++++++++++++++++++++ 09/17/2002 The Bradenton Herald Union County...has had trouble-free elections dating back at least to the early 1920s as the only county in Florida that continued to hand count its ballots. But that changed this year...The old way, stacking and restacking the color-coded ballots into winners and counting them, could be completed by a dozen or two poll workers in time to send the paperwork to Tallahassee and still be home for the late news on Election Day. But counting the county's 2,642 ballots using the new optical-scan machinery this year took two days, after a programming error rendered the automatic count useless. So it was back to the tried-and-true hand count for Union County, which is about 130 miles east of Tallahassee. The equipment vendor, Election Systems and Software Inc., accepted responsibility for the problems, which were caused when a printing error gave both Republican and Democratic ballots the same code. The machines read them both as Republican. ++++++++++++++++++++ PR Newswire, 01/30/2002 Election Systems & Software Captures Largest Election Contract in U.S. History by R. Jeffrey Berg, Director Corporate Marketing of Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S)..."The 918,000 registered voters of Miami-Dade County are certainly the winners today," stated Aldo Tesi, ES&S president and CEO. "In selecting the ES&S iVotronic Touch Screen system, they are acquiring the most technologically advanced voting solution now available in the world." — and — PR Newswire, 12/12/2001 Election Systems & Software Wins Broward County Florida by R. Jeffrey Berg, Director Corporate Marketing of ES&S..."We are very excited to have been selected by Broward County as their vendor of choice," stated Aldo Tesi, ES&S president and CEO. "The world of elections is undergoing dramatic change, and ES&S is leading the modernization of election systems not only in Florida but worldwide." +++++++++++++++++ San Antonio Express-News, 08/28/2002 "COUNTY APPROVES COMPUTER VOTE DEAL" by Tom Bower ..."When commissioners chose ES&S from among five proposals last April, they asked if the system could be in place in time for early voting in the upcoming Nov. 5 general election and were told yes...The system also includes 440 printers, for printing out mail-in paper ballots, as well as computer-based voter registration and ballot tabulation systems" — and — Omaha World-Herald 04/30/2002 "Election Systems wins Texas county contract" by Daniel P. Finney..."Election Systems and Software of Omaha has signed a $7.7 million contract with Bexar County, Texas, to provide election equipment. Bexar County, which includes the San Antonio metro area, has more than 825,000 registered voters. ES&S will provide 2,100 touch-screen electronic voting machines that will replace the county's paper ballots. The company also will provide Bexar with electronic voter-registration..." ++++++++++++++++ Talion.com NOVEMBER 5 2000 - On Friday, Nov 3, two hours after an early morning news release distribution to national news editors with links to photocopied Freedom of Information documents about discrepancies in Bush military record, hackers disrupted and shut down Talion.com, the site that provided access to the documents. The shutdown was traced to Qwest, supplier of T-1 lines that supports the host for Talion.com (Bookzone.com). Talion.com and approximately 125 other Internet sites on the Bookzone host were disabled. After the deadline for breaking news stories for Election Day passed, access was restored. Bookzone employees told Talion co-owner Bev Harris that an outage of this duration had never occurred before during four years of operation, and that they had never before been called ahead of time by their service provider (Qwest) to tell them their site would be going down. Qwest called Bookzone Friday morning to tell them service would be interrupted. No explanation was given by Qwest as to how the outage occurred. Hit counts provided by two separate programs indicate that the shutdown was not due to a surge in web traffic... +++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++ from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml? xml=/money/2002/08/30/cnroth30.xml Rothschild 'reasonable' despite downturn By Helen Dunne (Filed: 30/08/2002) NM Rothschild, one of the few remaining independent merchant banks, saw profits fall 44pc from £21.4m to £14.7m in the year ending March, according to figures posted on its website. On a pre-tax basis, profits fell from £38m to £21.4m. The performance was described as "reasonable" by chairman Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who added that NM Rothschild's investment bankers had "held their own" in a competitive market. He also singled out Lord Wakeham, who retired as a non-executive director on reaching 70, to thank him for his contribution as chairman of the audit committee. Lord Wakeham was recently criticised by a United States Senate investigation into the collapse of Enron, where he was also a non- executive director and a member of the audit committee... +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------- End of forwarded message ------- -------------------------------------- Steve Wingate, Webmaster ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com Latest Update: Cydonia in 3-D http://www.anomalous-images.com/Odyssey/Cydonia_3-d.html <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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