Overview of Four Main Companies

From "Whoscounting.net"

There are four Big Daddies in the manufacture of our Election equipment in America:
Diebold Election Systems, E.S.&S., Sequoia Voting Systems, and Triad.

Diebold and ES&S together count 80% of our electronic vote. ES&S is the number one with two-thirds of the vote counting software and the biggest supplier of touch screen machines. Sequoia - with one-third of the voting machines on the market - is usually regarded as number two. Or Diebold. Depends who you ask. There is cloaked secrecy surrounding ownership and details about the companies, but investigative research scraping the tip of the iceberg has discovered enough to set anyone’s hair on fire...

In December 2003, Ohio - of all places - conducted a comparative study of four electronic voting systems’ vendors. The figures were revealing; ES&S led the pack with a total of 17 general security risks found, but had the lowest number of “very high security risks”-- only one, and that was the feature that could add multiple votes to the final count without warning. Diebold and Sequoia tied for second worst, each with 15 reported general risks. Five of Diebold’s were rated “very high” and 3 of Sequoia’s. Ironically, Hart Intercivic, one of the lesser used systems, rated well with only 10 general risks, however 4 of those were identified as ”very high risk.”

You may be surprised to learn that there is currently NO Federal Agency that has regulatory authority or controls over the multi-billion dollar elections industry. There are NO government standards or restrictions on who can sell and service voting machines and voting systems. Virtually anybody with money and know-how can get into the business of counting our vote! This might help explain why we keep running into criminals, political candidates, defense contractors, and other odd bedfellows in the mix when we examine the rosters of our election companies.

They are privately owned companies, some by foreign nationals, with multi-million dollar contracts, haunted by the presence of convicted felons in high places, dummy front companies, even mob connections. Yes, the people involved in the Corporations counting our American vote could be cast members in any given episode of the Sopranos. Companies shuffling name changes, “shared” executives moving back and forth between them, sales representatives from New Jersey crime families bribing public officials, ex-felons writing computer code.... it’s anything but boring being in the electronic vote industry.

Republican Computer expert, IT Auditor Chuck Herrin proclaims, “I am by trade a professional white-hat Hacker.. .so I know how easily systems can be breached, especially by insiders. Roughly 80% of all computer crimes are perpetrated by insiders, so that’s the best place to look first. When the insiders also write the code and roll out the machines… there’s NO QUESTION that they have too much power and should not be trusted---whether they support my party or not. It’s called ‘segregation of duties’ and it’s vital for system integrity.”