Romney family buys voting machines through Bain Capital investment

I think it's a huge issue. This doesn't sit well.

 

That HBO video and this Romney info is among the most disturbing stuff I have heard in a long time.

Somebody please tell me that HBO video is overblown. I am utterly disturbed.

 

Watched the entire thing. The lack of oversight in the process is damning.

 

There was a psychic investigator tv show called The Dead Zone with Anthony Michael Hall about 6 years ago. I stopped watching and I don't really know where it ended up, but one of the episodes foreshadowed a voting machine rigged election. Seemed interesting.

 

The machines can deserve elevated scrutiny compared to other machines, but I doubt it's a big deal. Macro scale voter fraud (as opposed to individual voter fraud) can influence elections, but Romney would have to be an insane idiot to pull something like that off blatantly.

Sounds like ACORN conspiracies for Democrats.

 

Yes. He would have to be an insane idiot. I don't believe that fact alone would deter him. There are plenty of people who have been convinced that Obama is the anti-christ. There may be enough of them to make an insanely idiotic act acceptable.

 

Your fanciful partisan cynicism notwithstanding, I think voting box manipulation is incentivized for both sides to attempt, but this is an impeachable Watergate level offense that doesn't seem like Romney or any other campaign would like to be directly tied to.

It seems more like a "make it easier for our districts to vote" ploy, just like the supposed Acorn buses, than a "hey let's rip off everyone with rigged machines" criminal act.

At least that's what it seems like without all the imagination and paranoia flowing.

 

Vegas slot machines are used everyday in the largest city in the state, voting machines are used once a year and the state has an inherent conflict of interest in regulating them and knowing their software.

 

Exactly! The libs didn't complain when Acorn was signing up dead people and hacking voting machines. Now, they are worried about a legitimate investment, because it's the GOP. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

 

So we can't trust the Federal Election Commission to regulate our elections?

 

Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. It led me to bump the actual comparison to AKORN!11!!!. That thread is weighing in at 13 replies, while for less criminal, smaller infractions of AKORN!11!!! led to mega-threads, kept inflated by the FAUX sincerity crowd of basso, et alia.

Telling. Now we have some real election trouble, by paid consultants, in several states, but the news cycle is all about Candy Crowley. Gee, why is the "liberal media" not all over this election fraud story? Hmmm. Confusing facts are confusing.

 

I actually don't think any of it's good for anyone, I just don't care for convoluted or anecdotal hindsight insinuating that one party stole elections in alternating years and that they're somehow the only people investing in operating voting machines.

 

No oversight is a bad thing. No one is claiming fraud. But the door is wide open for anyone to walk through. That's a fact.

 

statements like this are extremely ignorant, and sooooo old. i lean democrat but i actually do care if someone is signing up dead people to vote. i do have a hard time seeing someone going around voting in dead people's names (get a life) to actually alter anything.

blanket statements like this wont stop but they do in fact suck.

 

I thought Acorn was found guilty and dismantled. So do we need to continue to complain?

As an aside, I don't ever recall Acorn tampering with voting machines.

IMO, your goose/gander comment is horrible. If our foundations of democracy are in jeardy, it isn't a partisan issue. Acorn got what they deserved. that said, comparing some rogue organization falsifying voter registration to political insiders themselves potentially rigging machines ...those are very very different things.

 

Have you followed up on Acorn lately, Mr. Goose? Cleared of charges in all states they've been tried in.

Surely Fox and Friends would follow up on that nugget as they've been eager subscribers to Acorn's newsletter.

 

It's underblown. That was about 2004. 2000 was even worse. Tens of thousands of African Americans were purged from the voter rolls with a sleight of hand. How many votes did Bush "win" Florida by? Who was Governor? The FL Secretary of State was in charge of whose election?

 

who cares.

 

Ohio Voting Machines owned by Romneys?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM, is this weird or what


http://www.politicolnews.com/tagg-romney-invested-in-ohio-electronic-voting-machines/#ixzz29rJxhKIE

Oct. 18, 2012 If the Romney’s can’t win legally, they’ll take over Ohio’s electronic voting machines through investments, a direct conflict of interest in a contentious state in this election.

The new owners of Ohio’s voting machines under the brand name HART Intercivic is none other than Tagg Romney the son of one of the candidates Mitt Romney. In recent weeks Tagg has taken a more “active role in his father’s campaign management” but when you look further, he also has a major problem with that role.


By virtue of conflict of interest alone, this role should be investigated by the DOJ preferably involving the addition of the FBI, Homeland Security and the CIA to ensure this connection will not endanger the vote in Ohio and other states.

After all isn’t the security of an election both state and federal authorities responsibility to ensure the election is not stolen, tampered, or results altered?


Read more: http://www.politicolnews.com/tagg-romney-invested-in-ohio-electronic-voting-machines/#ixzz2AGtLZ04c


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...10/23/angst-about-counting-the-votes-in-ohio/
Hart InterCivic is an Austin-based voting machine company that serves local governments all over the country. Its clients include Hamilton County, Ohio, which administers elections in Cincinnati. Hart InterCivic also has in its DNA just enough traces of Bain and Co. and Romney campaign donors to trigger serious angst in the liberal blogosphere about the fate of Ohio’s must-have 18 electoral votes.

Versions of the story have appeared in The Free Press, an Ohio Web site, in addition to Salon and in a liberal blog carried by Forbes. In a nutshell: three of Hart’s five corporate board members are executives of HIG Capital, a global private equity firm that made what it called a “significant” investment in Hart last year. Four HIG executives (Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman and Brian D. Schwartz) have been identified as Romney bundlers by independent watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation. HIG employees as a whole have donated $338,000 to the Romney campaign this year, according to Open Secrets. Three of them (Tamer, Berman and Bolduc) used to work at Bain. Among the investors in HIG is Solamere, the private equity firm run by Tagg Romney, the candidate’s son.

The implication is that through these links Romney will enjoy some kind of malign leverage over the vote count in Ohio. For the moment, at least, the Hart story is only some intriguingly connected dots.

Through a spokesman, HIG declined to comment, although it has told other publications that Solamere’s investment is not part of the firm’s stake in Hart. In a statement, Hart InterCivic cited its “long track record of supporting a fair and open Democratic process. Any suggestions that the company might try to influence the outcome of election results is unfounded.”

The Romney connections kindle bitter memories of 2004, when Walden O’Dell, chief executive of Diebold, the Ohio-based voting machine manufacturer, wrote a fundraising letter declaring his commitment to helping deliver the state to George W. Bush. When machine malfunctions and shortages caused long lines and exit polling showed Democrat John Kerry ahead, there were allegations of a stolen election. But Bush won the state by more than 100,000 votes, and the evidence never held up under close scrutiny. Diebold has since sold its election machine division to ES&S, which does business in the state.
Hart’s footprint in Ohio is pretty modest. While Hamilton, the state’s third most populous county (833,000), is a critical spot–Obama carried it in 2008–the only other jurisdiction that uses Hart products is tiny Williams County (39,000) in the rural northwest corner of the state.

The Hart system comes with two options: a paper ballot that is electronically scanned, and a digital “eSlate” device with a push button control. Hamilton County director of elections Amy Searcy said Tuesday that officials purchased the system five years ago and that Hart is not involved with its operations or maintenance.

“We own our equipment, we own the software, we have a bi-partisan team on staff that does all the pre-testing, all the diagnostic maintenance, ballot preparation and vote tabulation,” Searcy said. “Hart has nothing to do with it.”

She said Hart has performed without serious incident. But the company has come in for criticism. A 2007 study commissioned by then-Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner looked at the security of several voting systems used by localities, including Hart, and found them all wanting to some extent.
“The mechanisms that Hart uses to protect data and software is frequently based on absent or flawed security models,” researchers concluded. A Hart spokesman said the criticisms were overstated.

There are at least four Virginia jurisdictions that use Hart: the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church, Charlottesville and Chesapeake. Falls Church registrar David Bjerke said Tuesday he was aware of the discussion surrounding Hart, but that he regarded the system as completely secure. “There’s no way for the count to be manipulated,” he said.