EXCLUSIVE: Canadian E-Vote Firm Buys 2nd U.S. E-Vote Firm in Two Months, Lies About Ties to Chavez

[BradBlog]

EXCLUSIVE: On Heels of Diebold/Premier Purchase, Canadian E-Voting Firm Dominion Also Acquires Sequoia, Lies About Chavez-Ties in Announcement
'Intellectual Property' of voting systems still owned by firm linked to Venezuelan President, despite press statement to the contrary
PLUS: The election official/e-voting company revolving 'oversight' door continues to turn...

Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems has quietly announced its second acquisition of a major U.S. voting machine company in as many months and, right out of the gate, they've lied about it. Not an auspicious beginning for the company which may now, virtually overnight, have become the dominant private e-voting machine company in this country.

In our recent breaking coverage detailing the SEC's fraud lawsuits filed against Diebold and a number of their top executives --- including their former Chief Financial Officer who, as we reported exclusively back in 2007, was the top earner from an apparent insider sell-off at the company just days before its stock would plummet from its all-time high on the announcement of spinning off their troubled election division to a "new" company renamed Premier --- we noted that Diebold/Premier's assets had recently been purchased by a small Canadian firm by the name of Dominion Voting. But Dominion hasn't stopped there.

Their purchase of Diebold/Premier's assets was actually made from ES&S, the world's largest voting machine company, who was forced to divest of the assets they'd purchased from Diebold (previously, the second largest voting machine company in the country) for $5 million last year, as part of an anti-trust suit settlement with the DoJ.

In our coverage, we noted the comment of Dominion CEO John Poulos who, in the company's press release announcing the Diebold/Premier asset acquisition, stated ominously: "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which...will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

Indeed, the DoJ-scuttled ES&S merger with Diebold/Premier had been legally challenged since, among other reasons, the merger of the largest e-voting company with the country's second largest would have given a single company control of at least 70% of all votes cast in the nation.

What we had replaced for length, however, with the ellipses in Poulos' quote above, was this : "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which will restore much-needed competition to the American voting systems market and will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

How much is Poulos actually interested in "restor much-needed competition" for "the American voting systems market"? Apparently not so much, as according to a company press release quietly issued late in the afternoon on Friday, June 4th, Dominion has now also acquired what had previously been the third largest voting machine company in the U.S., Sequoia Voting Systems.

Not surprisingly, that late Friday announcement didn't say anything at all about "competition".

Worse, as The BRAD BLOG has confirmed, the new press release from Dominion simply lied about what the company has and hasn't purchased from Sequoia, a company which had lied themselves, for years, about the real ownership of its proprietary voting systems.

And if you think the oil industry's corruption of federal regulatory commissions was bad in light of the BP disaster, 'Big Oil' has nothing on 'Big Elections' - but because the U.S. media hasn't bothered to notice the gusher of corruption spewing into the American election system, neither has the U.S. public…

FULL EXCLUSIVE: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7906

[Subdivisions]

1. Since the thrust of our interest in being on DU is to vote for Democrats, you would

think these voting issues would get more play. But it's like everything else I guess: we all know the whole system is a sham and yet we buy into it anyway.

[Oregone]

2. Privatizing the integrity of democracy

What could go wrong?

[Scuba]

3. Everything.

[BradBlog]

4. An unstoppable gusher of corruption in our election system? nt

[LiberalLovinLug]

11. Get your government hands off my democracy!!!!!

I mean gosh look at it. Democracy is a so-called "publicly controlled" enterprise. Probably even ties in with that "social justice" agenda of the whacko libruls. Ain't nothin wrong with good ole American entrepreneurship to stop this evil socialist entity infesting our society.


:sarcasm:

[JBoy]

5. All ur election r belong to us.

[glitch]

6. Their name is Dominion? nothing blatant about that is there? Crikey. nt

[keepCAblue]

9. My first thought, too. The Dominionists

Howard Ahmanson, the right-wing religious extremist (aka Dominionist) who funded both Diebold and ES&S, must be involved in this somehow.

In a politico-religious context, dominionism (also called subjectionism<1>) is the tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians, especially in the United States, to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. The goal is either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law. The use and application of this terminology is a matter of controversy.

[Heywood J]

12. It's from a historical context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Dominions

[The Magistrate]

7. Perhaps, Sir, That Socialist Demon can See To it Results Come Out Right....

"Elected by a margin of one hundred thirty-four dead Mexicans who had risen to vote in alphabetical order, signed in in green ink...."

[Overseas]

8. K&R.

Kind of interesting to hear about Venezuelan ownership.

Wonder if he'd leak the proprietary software code, forcing a return to paper ballots.

[Fiendish Thingy]

10. So Dominion hopes dominate the US election market, yet...

They can't use their own equipment in Canada, can they? (I thought Canadian elections were all paper ballot, no?)