ES&S MELTDOWN ’07: Trainwreck Begins Anew as Voting Machine Company Fails in Wisconsin

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Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

The country’s largest supplier of voting machines, ES&S, is at it again. BRAD BLOG readers will remember last year’s extraordinary string of ES&S failures and meltdowns week after week during the primary elections and then general election across the country. Last year the excuse for late delivery of materials and other related failures in scores of states and counties was that everyone wanted materials all at the same time and ES&S was just too busy. So what’s their excuse this time?

According to John Washburn’s excellent blog Washburn’s World, election officials in Clark and Taylor Counties in Wisconsin are still awaiting delivery of Personal Electronic Ballots (PEB), memory cards, and paper ballots, and they have an election in just 12 days; April 3…

What does this late delivery mean to the counties? Well, first and foremost this is Wisconsin, which has a large “Snow Bird” population. Those are the folks who live up north in the spring, summer and fall, and down south during the winter months; “Snow Birds” are typically citizens of the northern states and tend to vote absentee. The state has less than 12 days to get the ballots, stuff the envelopes, get them into the mail and then hope they get to their intended addressees in time to mark the ballots and send them back before the deadline. Good luck.

Thanks to ES&S, that may not be possible now.

The other obvious reason that late delivery is a problem is that voting machines must be tested. “Logic and Accuracy” tests must be conducted to (theoretically) ensure the machines are accurate. Those tests cannot be performed until the county has the PEBs and memory cards and they must be performed in enough time to solve any newly revealed problems. Not that we’d expect any from ES&S, right?

No wonder Miller Co. Arkansas Election Administrator Robby Selph resigned from his job recently saying this about Election Systems and Software, Inc.:

The reason I am leaving is the provider of the Ivotronics [ES&S] and related software lacks competency to make their equipment work timely and effectively. They… make a difficult job impossible to do. They can’t spell, meet deadlines, send documents to the right address or code elections correctly. They leave races off the ballot for us to correct, they can’t program their software to work and you have to hand add the results. And they don’t return phone calls. The ES&S people in Arkansas are capable but the people I have dealt with in the home office in Omaha prevent them from being effective. They are also mean-spirited when you try to get them to correct the numerous and recurring errors.

Good luck Wisconsin!

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ES&S MELTDOWN ’07: Trainwreck Begins Anew as Voting Machine Company Fails in Wisconsin

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4 Responses

  1. 1)
    A Concerned Citizen said on 3/23/2007 @ 2:49pm PT: [Permalink]

    Obviously there is no way in hell people can get the ballots, mark them up, AND get them back in time.

    Surely America will be saved in time, before ’08, right??

  2. 3)
    Dredd said on 3/24/2007 @ 5:53am PT: [Permalink]

    A Concerned Citizen, at post #1 asked “Surely America will be saved in time, before ’08, right??”

    Ghouls of the Thor Hearne ACVR scandal have arisen, and it isn’t even halloween yet.

    We now have a link to the new US Attorney in Arkansas, who was Rove’s point man on “voter fraud” (anti-minority dems), and Rove and the ACVR conspiracy.

    Check this out:

    Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee.

    (Link Here, emphasis added).

    Before last year’s election, I posted this:

    The fact of the matter is that election felonies are being directed from the White House itself:

    The fourth man indicted in a New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme — in which Republican operatives jammed the phone lines of Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in a 2002 Senate race — will argue at trial that the Bush Administration and the national Republican Party gave their approval to the plan, according to a motion filed by his attorney Thursday.

    (Raw Story, bold added).

    It turns out that Bradblog was on the right trail when this was happening behind the scenes:

    Suffice to say, Karl Rove spoke to Republican lawyers this weekend (carried on C-SPAN) and thanked them for their work ensuring “clean elections” in 2000 and 2004.

    He singled out Mark F. “Thor” Hearne by name. Hearne was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney ’04 Inc. who, along with RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, created the so-called non-partisan “American Center for Voting Rights” (ACVR) just three days before being called to testify before Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-OH) U.S. House Administrative Committee hearing in March of 2005 on the Ohio Election. The front group, which declared tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, has still failed, to our knowledge, to disclose any information of it’s funders or proof of their 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan status. They operate out of a PO Box in Houston, TX, though neither of their founders live in Texas.

    ACVR was the only “Voting Rights” group called by Ney to testify at the hearings, and identified himself only as a “longtime advocate of voter rights” in his testimony. He failed to mention his connections to Bush/Cheney ’04 Inc.

    (Bradblog Article, emphasis added).

    Ney is now in prison where Gonzales and Rove should go … after all Scooter will be there too.

    Bottom Line: Rove ran the largest criminal election fraud organization in American history … directly from the White House!

  3. 4)
    phil said on 3/26/2007 @ 2:18pm PT: [Permalink]

    Rove should be classified as a domestic terrorist.
    His phone communications should be monitored, his home[s] should be searched, his computers, terminals, workstations, and files seized, and his FUCKING security clearance YANKED.

    Perhaps he’s done enough damage to this country that neither the constitution will be protected, nor the Patriot act used to protect us from him.

    Perhaps, once the cleansing of these fuckers from our government, then the constitution can be restored and the patriot act revoked. (As they’ll realize it had nothing to do with protecting this country or it constitution, perhaps the president though..But I won’t go there today.)

    This shit is all being abused and enough is enough.

    America Please Wake up.

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