The Most Ominous Monopoly

Last week the most ominous monopoly in America's long history opened its gaping jaws. Sniffing the air and casting its gaze around for victims, the horrifying leviathan took its first breaths amidst reports of the merger of Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Diebold.

Black Box Voting published maps revealing the breathtaking demographic scope of the new corporate fusion of Diebold and ES&S, and Democracy for New Hampshire published an analysis of the voting machine industry that is now dominated by the freshly minted mammoth monopoly and labeled the new entity a "national security threat."

America's love story with capitalism is crystallized in this merger of the two computerized voting machine giants like nothing that has ever been seen before in American history.

With its acquisition of Diebold, ES&S will now control almost three-quarters (74.8%) of vote-counting, ballot-tallying and the tabulation of official election results in the entire United States of America.

In American culture, capital trumps democracy -- first one way, then another. In the nineteenth century, Boss Tweed's money paid for votes with the birth of machine politics in Tammany Hall. Soon, the new industry spread from coast to coast with vast complexes of political machinery installed in Chicago by Daley and in Kansas City by Pendergast and a host of other American metropolises.

By the dawn of the age of television, corporate money merged with Madison Avenue to create a culture of money-driven politics that manufactured candidates and public consent for them in a smooth chain of systematic operations. Madison Avenue and public relations fulfilled the visions of Walter Lippmann who advocated the corporate manufacture of consent while he captivated Wall Street with his enthralling rationale, "Private property was the original source of freedom. It is still its main ballpark."

The rectitude of money-driven politics became more than a philosophy of life; it was enshrined into religious cant by Norman Vincent Peale who urged his throngs of followers, "Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system."

While America obsessed over economic freedom, few players actually cared about the process of democracy other than to divine how to make money out of it.

Privatizing the processes of democracy provides the perfect metaphorical backdrop to Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism, A Love Story.

The corporate history of ES&S presents a proud profile -- starkly partisan and embarrassingly political pedigree for the vote-counting corporation is rock-ribbed Republican from conception to gestation to maturation.

Shortly after the merger became the source of minor ripples on the blogosphere, the Wikipedia article on ES&S was drastically truncated, shortened and reduced to approximately one quarter of its former length. The following passage on its proud Republican pedigree was deleted entirely:

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel's ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel's first election victory was described as a "stunning upset" by one Nebraska newspaper.

The seminal corporation in ES&S's origin was bankrolled by Chuck Hagel and the oil-rich Hunt family who have a reputation for funding right-wing causes. Source Watch, the highly reputed media monitor, describes Hunt Oil Company as one of the major donors behind the political careers of the various members of the Bush family.

Not only does ES&S represent a potential threat to the integrity of American elections by veering beyond the pale of constitutional commitments to capitalism, this development represents the formal robotification of democracy. A robotic monopoly will now control three-quarters of ballot integrity in the United States of America.

When Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson contemplated a democratic form of government, they never conceived that their vision might be placed in the hands of partisan capitalists prepared to install programmable robots as the ultimate custodians of democracy.

From their high seats on Mount Democracy, Franklin and Jefferson weep for America. If there was ever a monopoly in American history that deserved to be broken up, it is ES&S. In his day, Teddy Roosevelt stood up against big business and busted trusts and monopolies.

To his already lengthy agenda of historical tests that stretches from tax reform, economic rejuvenation, wars in the Middle East to a broken foreign policy, President Obama now faces a uniquely monopolistic monstrosity - a robotic ballot-tallying monopoly.

Follow Michael Carmichael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alchemistoxford

Comments

[emlr]

This article is one that needs to be screaming from the headlines!

People just don't realize the insidious undermining of our elections by these companies.
How will the machines be validated to ensure no hidden programs exist somewhere deep in the bowels to prevent votes fopr a particular candidate from being counted or counting extra votes for a favored candidate of the ES&S owners, all right wingers?

I will NEVER trust any results coming from these machines.
Back to paper ballots!

[MerhabaAbi]

This will actually speed up and ensure fairness in voting. Too many hands were in the pie before, now we've got a verifiable and streamlined system that needn't eliminate votes just because a partisan overseer doesn't like the way the voter marked the ballot. This is a fine day for democracy and the American voter wins.

[Kaviraj]

You are soooooo naive!

[BBackSoon]

You’re delusional. If one system used in electronic voting whoever controls that system is capable of skewing the results. We saw the ease of changing software to move the onscreen vote for Candidate-A to the ledger of Candidate-B. With no paper trail the vote is nothing more than bits and bytes that can be manipulated in any way the programmer likes.

This is like giving your paper ballot to a person in front of the ballot box with a big eraser and a single political mindset.

This is not fare. It is complete control.

[1izzard]

As they say, "It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes!"

As a computer professional, I know how easy it would be to hide vote changing code in the software. Even if you factor out malicious intent, ALL software has bugs and many of those slip past the QA process.

If we are to continue with electronic vote tallying, we MUST make the source code open to the public. By keeping the software a "trade secret", you have essentially out sourced vote counting to an organization that claims the process for counting votes is a trade secret. Since when is our democratic (small d) process a trade secret?!?

[Vinca]

I've just about decided, that us little people should shut up and accept, that he who has the GOLD RULES.

[William1950]

and there will be no way to prove fraud.. there is so much wrong with this scenario ... and ...
I think I need a drink, and I don't drink.
not gonna sleep tonight

[DuPageDem]

Great post. Let's just put them out of business and go back to paper ballots.

One correction: Daley the First didn't invent the Chicago machine. It was in place for decades by the time he won his first term in '55, well after guys like Cermak and Thompson.

[SewaneeLeftist]

It was SO embarrassing when Russia, China, and other countries offered to send voting process observers to cover the 2000 Florida recount, teasing us, in other words, for out sending election observers to other countries when our own house was not in order. It's even MORE embarrassing that we might NEED those observers if we don't find much better ways to guarantee accurate and fair elections.

[SewaneeLeftist]

Very good article, Mr. Carmichael, but very sobering about the erosion of democracy under capitalism and under thorough-going conflicts of interest. "In American culture, capital trumps democracy -- first one way, then another," is a very true and very sad fact. And the whole article provides more evidence that capitalism is a morality play rather than an economic system -- an immorality play to me, a democratic socialist. But as this corrupted version of capitalism endures, we cannot allow private companies to be in charge of keeping track of voting when we've had nine years of extremely aggressive and extremely widespread voter suppression efforts from the right wing. Nor can we let political operatives, volunteer or paid, be in charge of any government tracking of voting and voting fraud.

[wildedge]

The very notion of a private sector owned voting booth is disgusting and undemocratic.

[ezeflyer]

The most important act Dems could perform is to take us back to paper ballots and snail mail voting, perhaps adding secure site online and telephone voting. What sense does it make for Obama to worry about re-election of Dems when elections are in the hands of the Reps?

Voter fraud should be deemed a capital crime, punishable by life in prison.

[jayraye]

A private corporate interest in charge of counting the votes of American Citizens, and American Citizens bound (mandated) to pay tribute each month to a private corporate interest with the IRS as enforcer. "What could be next?" we wonder.

To the ACLU, Re: request for donation (2nd in as many weeks)
I regret to say that I will no longer be donating to the ACLU. In the current Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the ACLU is allied with the corporate interest and against the American people. The ACLU also supports Corporate Personhood. The ACLU believes that money is $peech and that corporations are Persons. If so, than Corporations are very special Persons, Super and Imortal Persons. With super golden $peech, like the Gilded Ones on Mt Olympus.

A ruling for Citizens United will unleash a tidal wave of Corporate Cash that will overwhelm our nation's politics, drown out the speech of actual American Citizens (mere mortals), and further corrupt our elected officials. The ACLU shoud stop promoting corporate "rights"; coporations should be subordinate to our democracy, not in control of it. The donation that I would normally send to the ACLU, has been sent instead to:
www.ReclaimDemocracy.org
"to help restore citizen authority over corporations." ---Sincerely,

[WorkingClass]

Both parties are actually one party. The Corporate Party. The Corporate party wants rigged elections to insure there will not be a ballot box revolt. The richest 1% which now controls more wealth than the "bottom" 95% thinks it can enslave us. In the end the 95% will march against the 1% and DESTROY THEM.

[logan9]

America: Land of Corruption and Free Market Fundamentalists that worship money over people!

As far as I am concerned (unless things drastically change) these Right Wing Crazies can have their country back, and continue their course of flushing it down the toilet! Meanwhile, I will be in Europe or another compassionate and tolerant state that invests in people instead of solely profiting from them! I know... how easily I give up!

Obama... you might want to make a stand, and stand up for people and NOT Wall Street! 'Tis true, America is a Corporatocracy with little incentive for equity and justness!

[larry278]

A bit off thread- NV Peale's gimme god is still popular with the Christers of the rightwing nuts, neo-cons, fundies of mega churches, tele-evangelests, etc. The people who rejected Peale's simplistic creed & most elementary system of belief when Peale usa living have been joined by younger people who see something more than a gimme god with its scruples in lieu of faith. In the event that there really are dietys, the probably don't resemble the Christer's gimme god.

[DasBoot]

Oh shoot, we're screwed. This is bad, really bad, unspeakably bad.

And yes, where was the Justice Department on this? Can't the Dems do anything right.

Don't be surprised by the high number of surprising Republican upsets in the next election and occasional "irregularities" that will not be investigated by the MSM.

At least Greg Pallast will write a good report on it, too.

[mergina]

Ah the voting machines. There is a sure win for some republicans.