I assumed here in Missoula our voting was safe since we had paper ballots....after I recieved an email, I decidec to check on this....turns out our votes are counted by a system that has a very bad reputation and is tied to the worst voted fraud in our nations history.
here is the email I recieved...
Our elections in Montana are not hand-ballot, they are COUNTED by machine, according to our own Vickie Zeier. While I was voting absentee today, She admitted to me after a bit of prodding that the company that gives Montana the scanners to count votes (at least in Missoula County) is the company listed below. I'll be gone until next week, so if someone else wants to research and investigate it's up to you.
Dear Matt:
Election Systems & Software
11208 John Galt Blvd
Omaha, NE 68137
Sincerely, Vickie Zeier
Vickie M. Zeier
Missoula County Clerk & Recorder/Treasurer
vzeier@co.missoula, mt.us
(406) 258-3234
ES & S History....
WHO RUNS DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS? WHO WROTE THE PROGRAMS?
Bob Urosevich is the CEO of Diebold Election Systems. Urosevich created the original software architecture for Diebold Election Systems, and his original company, called I-Mark Systems, can be found in the source code signatures.
Prior to programming for and taking over Diebold Election Systems, Urosevich programmed for and was CEO of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), which counts 56 percent of the votes in the United States. When Urosevich left ES&S, Chuck Hagel took his position. (Hagel then ran for the U.S. Senate, with ES&S machines counting his own votes, but failed to disclose that he had been both CEO and Chairman of ES&S on his disclosure documents).
Bob Urosevich, together with his brother Todd, founded ES&S. Bob then went to run Diebold, while Todd still is a Vice President at ES&S. Diebold and ES&S, together, count about 80 percent of the votes in the United States.
IN Missoula We USE.............
ES&S Model 650, Model 100 and its problems.....some of them...
... Broward County, Florida. November 2004. ES&S DRE System
Vote tabulation software loses 70,000 votes for Amendment 4.
....Orange County, Florida. November, 2004. ES&S Optical Scan System
Vote tabulating software omits counting 8,400 votes.21
....Guilford County, North Carolina. November, 2004. ES&S DRE System
Vote tabulating software changes two outcomes in Guilford County.
.....Carroll County, North Carolina. November, 2004. ES&S Optical Scan System
Vendor mis-programming caused the miscount.
.....Mahoning County, Ohio. November, 2004. ES&S DRE
Machines broke down in 16 precincts; others needed calibration.
Many problems plagued the ES&S iVotronic touch screen voting machines in 16 of the 312 Mahoning County precincts.
......ES&S iVotronic — Case Study of a Tiny Programming Bug
All software has bugs, but the opportunity to examine a bug in voting software is rare.
Fortunately, we had a chance after a news article was published May 13, 2004 telling about a
"serious bug" found by Orlando Suarez in Miami-Dade's ES&S election equipment nearly a year
earlier. ES&S had known about this serious bug for nearly a year and had not fixed it.71
....Indiana – ES&S iVotronic
Election Systems & Software provided illegal software for last year's election, lied to the
board about a temporary fix and fired a helpful project manager, said Clerk of the Courts
Jill Jackson
.....Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood
The claim: March 8, 2004. "Well, I have a high confidence level. And it's based on the fact that,
since 2002, when we put new equipment in place in the state of Florida, that we have
had no problem whatsoever, according to our 67 supervisors of elections." 169
The facts: Miami-Dade County, 2002: ES&S iVotronics failed to count 8.2% of the votes.170
Broward County, 2002: An ES&S iVotronic error missed counting 22% of the votes.171
Palm Beach County, 2002. Sequoia Edge touch screens froze up when the language
was selected, sometimes switched votes to the opposite candidate.172
Broward County, January 2004: ES&S iVotronics lost 134 votes in a one-race election.
The winning margin was 12 votes.173
....ES&S Paid Commissions to Officials who Endorsed Their Products
....Fortune's Worst Technology of 2003: Paperless Voting
Fortune magazine's winner of the worst technology of 2003 award was "Paperless Voting."
Fortune considers this technology even worse than implanted identification devices, which only
won the runner-up award.
.....the complete document including citations is available here
......That’s not to say that there were no problems. When election workers plugged memory cards from Flathead County electronic voting machines into computers, the computers tabulated all the county’s votes for just one candidate.
County Election Director Monica Eisenzimer says she felt more comfortable using the printouts to count the votes anyway, “especially with all the speculation about the machines.”
The voting machines in use in the Flathead, made by Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S), are the only ones approved for use in Montana by the Secretary of State’s office.
Elsewhere, problems with ES&S machines were reported in one Arkansas county, where some precincts reported more votes than voters, and another where no votes were recorded in a mayoral race. In Florida, 18,000 votes were completely lost by ES&S machines. read more here
.......IMPORTANT.....
In October of 2007, We The People Foundation filed the Clean Election lawsuit against all 50 states. To date, Montana has ignored this lawsuit, making it an issue that we the voters must address before our election on November 4th. This press release is being sent to all known newspapers as well as other media outlets in Montana. Everyone reading or hearing this needs to promptly contact his or her local elections office. Of Montana's 56 counties, 44 use hackable optical scanners to count our votes. We must all contact our county elections office and demand to see the report issued by our state election official, better known as the Secretary of State, certifying the integrity of our vote counting machines. If such a report is not available, then the vote counting machines covered by the county report cannot be legally used in the election. (See MCA 13-17-101.2). Each county's report must be a certification of the integrity of the software used in the machines, the pronouncement that the machines were investigated and found to be unhackable, the chips in them deemed not replaceable, no modems (which can be either hard-wired or operated by remote control,) exist in the machines, and basically a strong verification that each machine is absolutely tamper-proof and fully reliable, as well as operating in a fully transparent manner. Please take a moment now and contact your county elections office. If each of us do this and view the reports for ourselves, we can better guarantee a fair and honest election. Remember, it is not he who votes that counts, but he who counts the votes.
Furthermore, we should all be aware of the fact that we have a right to request our votes be hand-counted. Note that when you go to vote, each precinct has a large envelope sitting in front of the election official. Those large envelopes are provided to hold the ballots from voters requesting their ballot be hand-counted. If you are unsure, as I am, that an unhackable machine is accurately counting your vote, then request that your vote be hand-counted instead of sent through the optical scanner.
If we all work together, we can not only further ensure a fair and honest election, but will also address the well-known voter fraud proactively rather than reactively.
Sharbono for secretary of state
