As I was giving a Freeper on another message board that I post on a warm glass of shut the hell up, I found this:
"Foreign Ownership of U.S. Vote-Counting?
No serious discussion of the major vote-counting companies in this country would be complete without mention of Sequoia Pacific, based in Jamestown, New York. It is the supplier of both optical scanning and direct-record computer vote-counting equipment and goes head-to-head with BRC in several regions of the country. To give some idea of its importance in the industry, the firm was recently awarded the mammoth New York City contract for its direct-record machines. Relevance has learned that Sequoia Pacific is owned by Jefferson Smurfit Group, p.l.c., a massive transnational conglomerate which is the largest paper-based packaging company in the world, with over 8 billion dollars per year in revenue. Jefferson Smurfit has 43,000 employees in 23 countries, including a strong presence in the U.S., which is headquartered in St. Louis. What we found most interesting is that, according to its 1995 annual report, Jefferson Smurfit is an Irish firm based in Dublin and it boasts many "heavy hitters" on its board, including Albert Reynolds, the former Prime Minister of Ireland, Ray MacSharry, a former member of the European Commission and the European Parliament; Eoin Ryan, a former Irish Senator and member of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland; a number of top Irish or European banking and air line officials, and Dr. T.A. Reynolds, Jr., a member of the board of Gannett News Services, one of the largest newspaper chains in America. This might owe in part to the fact that Jefferson Smurfit is the number four supplier of newsprint in the United States.
We asked Penelope Bonsall of the Federal Elections Commission's Office of Election Administration in Washington whether her office had concerns about foreign control of U.S. vote-counting. Without casting aspersions on the integrity of this highly-respected firm, we questioned the propriety of such an arrangement and its implications. With so many reports of industrial espionage being perpetrated by our allies in Japan, Israel and France, to name a few, we wondered if it was wise to have a foreign firm, with unknown safeguards against criminal or foreign intelligence penetration of its computer source-code, counting the U.S. vote. She responded: "I suppose that anything is theoretically possible but the likelihood of that happening is virtually impossible. The structure of our electoral process in this country does not lend itself to this." She was equally unconcerned about another foreign-owned company which is eyeing the U.S. vote-counting market-Computer Devices Canada.
This type of glib, yet unreassuring, response to serious questions seems to be the standard among defenders of the current computer voting system. Their trump card remains the argument that there is no evidence that there is a serious problem. Which brings us to the closest thing to a smoking gun yet to appear in the electronic voting controversy.
The "Machine Politics" of Computer Voting
On election night 1995 in an affluent New Orleans suburb, a few hours after the polls had closed, Republican Susan Bernecker, a popular first-time challenger for Jefferson Parish Council, was nowhere to be found in the reported election returns. "The night of the election the numbers came in for everybody but me for an hour and a half. When my numbers didn't come in everyone in my party went wild." Later, despite major popular support for her grassroots insurgency against the Jefferson Parish machine, she went down to defeat by a 22% to 58% margin. In a recent phone interview, Bernecker told Relevance "In all of the 54 precincts the percentages were in the same one third/two third range-even in ones that I didn't get out and pound the pavement." She cites another female candidate in the Orleans Parish who got 33% of the vote in every precinct. Bernecker noted that the candidate also contested her election, but the technical expert she hired wasn't allowed to examine the machines. She states that the two parishes were the only ones in the state that used Sequoia Pacific's direct-record computers.
...."
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a370cfb281136.htm
So the Freepers figured out if you can't beat em, take em over and know that your Democratic opponents won't say shit because they were doing it too?
I love the comments from the Freepers at the bottom of the page. Are these the same people who are now calling us internet conspiracy theorists?:
"In summation: Computerized voting + national vote fraud + foreign control of vote counting + foreign campaign contributions = President Bill Clinton
The worst president in U.S. history wasn't even elected.
Posted by: jedediah smith (emailname) *
04/08/99 11:53:28 PDT
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To: jedediah smith
Last Novembers elections, I was watching the local news and they were talking to the official local county elections officer in charge. They were asking her what all they do on election day, etct.
So, the elections official is giving a play by play of how her morning went, and she says that everything went fine, except, they had a false fire-alarm in the building (real early, when not too many people were there) where everyone had to leave the building for about 15 minutes.
Nothing more mentioned or thought of about this inccident. But, that night, for the first time, in like 50-60 years, a Democrat WON the election. According to local news, a moderate Democrat, beat out an extreme Conservative.
From: jungleboy (emailname) *
04/08/99 12:26:23 PDT
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To: jedediah smith
Great Post, Jedediah.
This is why "getting out and voting Republican" will not work, no matter how hard we try.
From: Clarence () *
04/08/99 13:22:01 PDT
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To: NDCORUP
From page 12 of the article, here's a typical vote counting machine with an internal modem.
The caption reads:
"Although there are no telltale phone handsets on the outside, many vote-counting machines like this one contain internal modems. We were told the modem is protected against outside access from hackers by protective software-which we cannot view because it is a trade secret. What is the protection against inside access by the handful of companies which are enjoying ever increasing control over the election process?"
1 Posted on 02/07/2000 07:29:04 PST by jedediah smith
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To: jedediah smith
The Republicans had better do something about this because the Democrats will not stop at ANYTHING to win.
3 Posted on 02/07/2000 08:11:51 PST by Cowgirl
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To: Cowgirl
The Republicans had better do something about this because the Democrats will not stop at ANYTHING to win.
You might want to start thinking in terms of Nationalists v. Globalists. It will make the actions of the Republican leadership easier to swallow.
5 Posted on 02/07/2000 14:17:48 PST by Askel5
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