Election Company Has Long Criminal History.

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http://www.madcowprod.com/11242004.html

 

 

Election Company Has Long Criminal History.

 

Thugs, Racketeers Counting American Votes

 

" An electronic voting system is to a mechanical one what a nuclear

bomb is to a hand grenade... If someone manages to sabotage it, the

results can be catastrophic. "

 

November 24 2004-Venice,FL.

by Daniel Hopsicker

 

While Ukrainians poured into the streets of their capital Kiev to

protest a presidential election they say was stolen by that country's

current regime, here in the U.S. a little-known election company

called Sequoia Pacific, responsible for putting our own `current

regime' in power four years ago, was at the center of controversy last

week... for the second Presidential election in a row.

 

While U.S. newspapers have been filled with quotes from American

officials pontificating about election miscues in the Ukrainian

election, doubts have been raised anew about the accuracy of the

election results of Sequoia Pacific, fingered for blame four years

ago in the Florida Vote Snafu which marred the 2000 election.

 

 

" Mum's the word "

 

Senator Richard Lugar, `monitoring' butterfly ballots in Cyrillic,

issued a statement calling the Ukrainian election " unfair. " And a top

White House representative said authorities in the Ukraine appeared to

have indulged in a " concerted and forceful program " of fraud.

 

Yet a MadCowMorningNews investigation into the ownership of the

companies that count America's votes has uncovered evidence indicating

the crisis of democracy in Kiev is hardly more serious than the one

taking place in Washington, D.C.

 

One of America's two major election companies, Sequoia Pacific, has a

felony 'rap sheet' an arm-long. In the endless news coverage of the

recent Presidential Election, this news has somehow failed to surface,

perhaps because if it had, people might start pouring into the streets

here, too.

 

Yet even as Sen. Lugar and the unnamed White House official were

making their righteous statements about the virtues of democracy in

foreign countries, researchers at the University of California,

Berkeley were announcing their findings of irregularities in three

Florida counties using electronic voting machines from Sequoia Pacific

and industry giant Election Systems & Software, the U.S.'s two largest

election services companies.

 

 

Where Are International Observers When You Need Them?

 

The " irregularities " resulted in a so-far inexplicable 260,000

additional votes for President Bush.

 

A New York Times editorial demanded a " Fair Vote Count. " But the

editorial writers were referencing—not embattled citizens in the

states of Ohio and Florida—but those of the Ukraine. The Times said,

" International observers alleged systemic voting abuses. "

 

What the Times and almost all of the major media refuse to address is

the fact that there has, to date, been no credible counter-argument

put forward to counter the loud and vociferous assertions of numerous

computer experts who insist that electronic voting machines can be

rigged. And that if they can be rigged, they are… because if you

leave the bank vault open, sooner or later someone is going to rob it.

 

The persistent allegation that American elections might not be as open

and honest as has thus far been made known has received no serious

coverage.

 

Why the official silence?

 

Let's take a look.

 

 

Racketeers Anonymous

 

Two of the three Florida counties cited, Broward and Miami-Dade, used

machines made by Election Systems & Software (ES & S). Palm Beach

County uses machines from Sequoia Voting Systems. (The company which

has so far received the most critical scrutiny, Cleveland-based

Diebold Election Systems, has no touch-screen machines in use in

Florida.)

 

In essence, the U.C. researchers said that Bush got more votes than

could have expected, and attributed the discrepancy to

" irregularities " associated with electronic voting machines.

 

" The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of

electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in

votes for President Bush, " the study said. " Compared to counties with

paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were

significantly more likely to show increases in support for President

Bush between 2000 (election) and 2004. "

 

" The association between electronic voting and increased support for

President Bush (in the three Florida counties) is impossible to

overlook, " the U.C. Berkeley researchers stated.

 

What makes their conclusions difficult to dismiss as " anomalous

evidence " is the nature and history of the election companies

themselves...

 

Visible in the public record of Sequoia Pacific, a company counting

one in three American votes, is clear and convincing evidence that the

company has been run, perhaps for decades, as a Continuing Criminal

Enterprise specializing in blatant and widespread bribery of public

officials, with numerous felony convictions, Mob ties, and a history

replete with stories of threats, coercion, and even murder.

 

Sequoia Pacific has a more colorfully-criminal corporate history, we

learned, than that of any organization this side of the Gambino

Family. In fact, the Gambino Family and Sequoia Pacific have had more

than a nodding acquaintance, according to newspapers in New York

reporting on the intrigue surrounding the awarding of a multi-million

dollar contract for election machines in New York City during the

mid-90's, where Sequoia's representative in the bidding gained

notoriety for attempting to grease the skids al little at a marathon

luncheon hosted by Salvatore Reale, a Gambino underboss who later pled

guilty to racketeering.

 

Yet Sequoia Pacific is not unique... Instead, it is emblematic of the

systemic wrongdoing of all three major election services companies.

 

 

A New Word for a New World

 

Sequoia Pacific's record is riddled with instances of criminal bribery

and political corruption.

 

It began its modern life as Automatic Voting Machine, spun off to

shareholders of Defense contractor Rockwell in the 1960s. The

company's founder, Lloyd A. Dixon Jr. resigned as president and CEO on

Jan. 10, 1973, and later went to prison, after being indicted by a New

York federal grand jury for bribing Buffalo election officials.

 

The company was fined nearly $50,000 for bribing Texas and Arkansas

officials… not a particularly auspicious beginning.

 

Then things got worse.

 

Last week we briefly related the sordid tale of the next owner of

Sequoia Pacific, financier and corporate raider Louis Wolfson.

Wolfson was convicted of bribing the only Supreme Court Justice ever

forced to resign in disgrace, " Dishonest Abe " Fortas.

 

Fortas got caught palming a lifetime yearly " retainer " from the wily

Wolfson's family foundation... Alas for " Dishonest Abe, " as he came

to be called, the Law draws no distinction between " accepting a

retainer " and " taking a bribe. "

 

Fortas cut himself a deal. He taped phone calls, at the FBI's behest,

with Wolfson, who was pleading with the Supreme Court Justice to

dummy up. In the transcripts of these phone calls the word `cover-up'

enters the American lexicon for the first time.

 

Apparently Fortas coined it at the instant of need, when he said

(probably for the tape recorder), " No I can't do that! That would be a

cover-up! "

 

The Modern Age had begun.

 

 

" Tacho Has Only One Question "

 

Dixon's main competitor, Ransom Shoup, also got sent to the Big House,

in 1979. The company which became E S & S, barely escaped a Justice

Dept. investigation, but only after a change in Administrations in

Washington.

 

" We had to get Ronald Reagan elected President to get this thing (the

investigation) killed, " quipped E S & S's President at the time.

 

In a November 29, 1985 Chicago Tribune article headlined " VOTE

MACHINES CAN BE A DIFFICULT SELL " a company marketing director is

quoted as saying that " Whether working in the United States, Europe,

Asia, Africa or Latin American the first disquieting question of

potential customers is always the same. `Can the things be rigged?' "

 

The election company exec, Ron Lawyer, spoke of meeting Shoup for the

first time in Managua, Nicaragua, in the palace of then-Nicaraguan

dictator Anastasio Somoza, to whom Shoup was attempting to sell voting

machines.

 

" Tacho (Somoza) had one question, " Lawyer told the Tribune. " Can I be

guaranteed the election? " '

 

 

We first learned of Sequoia Pacific's penchant for greasing the palms

of corrupt public officials from the well-publicized news accounts in

the year 2000 about Louisiana's Commissioner of Elections Jerry

Fowler, convicted of taking as much as ten million dollars over a

period of a decade from Sequoia's Southeast Representative, a man

named Pasquale " Rocco " Ricci, from Marlton, New Jersey.

 

Even after pleading guilty to suborning democracy in the state of

Louisiana for more than a decade, Ricci remained something of a

mystery figure, we learned to our surprise.

 

When L.J. Hymel, the silver-maned and somewhat elaborately-coiffed US

Attorney for Louisiana gave a press conference on the steps of the US

Courthouse in Baton Rouge after Fowler's sentencing, an out-of-state

reported posed a question to him…

 

" Was Pasquale Rocco Ricci of Marlton New Jersey—the man convicted of

bribing Louisiana's Commissioner of Elections for over a decade—a

member of Organized Crime? "

 

" I don't know, " replied Hymel. Apparently the question had not crossed

his mind, or was of little concern. " I don't know, " he repeated again,

a little more forcefully this time.

 

The reporter persisted. " You're the US Attorney, and you don't know if

the man who bribed the state Commissioner of Elections is a member of

Organized Crime? "

 

From the shocked silence among the assembled members of what passes

for a free press in the benighted state of Louisiana, it was clear

that the question was akin to asking the U.S. Attorney whether he

enjoyed having sex with small furry animals. It was a faux pas.

 

The reporter had violated a taboo.

 

Whether the man who fixed elections for Sequoia Pacific in Louisiana

for over a decade was a member of organized crime was not considered a

fit topic for discussion on the steps of the US District Courthouse.

 

And, indeed, the closer you look into the election services industry,

the more the whole topic appears to have been placed off-limits. Had

it not been, we would have already heard a lot more about Sequoia Pacific.

 

 

" Pressing Bernacker and getting Gambalucca "

 

" Long-time Louisiana Governor Earl Long once claimed that with the

right elections commissioners he could make the voting machines play

" Home Sweet Home. " Commissioner of Elections and former pro football

player Jerry Fowler would have been his kind of public official.

 

Fowler got himself in big gambling trouble at Harrah's casino in

Atlantic City in the mid-'90's, which helped explained his taking

bribes. It was at this same time when allegations of voting

irregularity became commonplace in Louisiana.

 

Curiously, gambling was the burning issue on the ballot in state

elections at the same exact time.

 

One proposition concerned Harrah's proposal to build a casino in

downtown New Orleans. From one of five losing candidates that alleged

vote fraud in a suit at this time, we learned of the strange death of

the Supervisor of Elections in New Orleans just two weeks before

voters went to the polls.

 

Tony Giambelluca, who held the keys to the warehouse where the

election machines were kept, turned up an apparent suicide. He had

chosen to take his life behind a garbage dumpster, which seems an odd

decision. Given the choice, we figure most people would choose to end

their existence in a slightly more scenic locale.

 

" Given the choice. "

 

The discovery that the election scandal had already consumed lives

certainly quickened our interest. The sad fact is that nothing becomes

a true scandal in America anymore until after the bodies begin to pile

up.

 

Voting machine tests performed and videotaped by a suspicious local

candidate immediately after this election demonstrated that votes

Susan Barnecker cast for herself during the test were electronically

recorded for her opponent.

 

The test was repeated several times with the same result. (The

astonishing video footage is in our documentary The Big Fix, 2000. You

can see the trailer here.)

 

Manhattan Commissioner of Elections Douglas Kellner investigated

Barnecker claims, then questioned the reliability of Sequoia Pacific

machines. The issue quickly became a focal point among people who

distrust electronic voting.

 

 

So? Rocco Ricci counts your vote. You got a problem with that?

 

But it was the efforts of another unsuccessful candidate, Woody

Jenkins, the Republican Senate candidate in Louisiana in 1996, who

lost the contested 1996 US Senate race by a hairsbreadth margin to

Democrat Mary Landrieu, that led to prosecutions.

 

Allegations of voting irregularities by Republican Jenkins led to a

year-long investigation. The probe quickly came across evidence of

massive bribery, which became the focus of the investigation that

followed, leading to charges that Elections Commissioner Fowler had

squandered $8.6 million in state money on worthless election

equipment, and taken kickbacks from voting machine contractors working

for Sequoia Pacific, all in a scheme engineered by that company's

executives.

 

Fowler was eventually sentenced to five years in prison.

 

But for Jenkins tenacious efforts the world might never have learned

of Pasquale " Rocco " Ricci. And although Fowler's conviction was big

news in the state's two major newspapers, the New Orleans

Times-Picayune and the Baton Rouge Advocate, neither mentioned the

name of the company on whose behalf he was being bribed… Sequoia

Pacific, which was successful at keeping the company's name completely

out of local newspaper and television coverage.

 

So although the defendants signed admissions stating that the entire

scheme was carried out on behalf of the Sequoia Pacific Corp., the

firm garnered zero negative publicity. No 'bad pub' at all.

 

That's clout.

 

 

More dummy front companies

 

Study of this case revealed some interesting details about the way the

'election services' industry works...

 

First, the scheme showed that there was collusion, rather than

competition, between the two major election services firms, Sequoia

Pacific and E S & S. Court documents revealed the two sold voting

machines back and forth to each other until they had arrived at the

figure they wanted the client, the state of Louisiana, to pay.

 

Nor was this an isolated case. The bribery conviction of Arkansas

Secretary of State Bill McCuen, for example, revealed that E S & S's

predecessor company, Business Records Corp. of Dallas, arranged for

contracts which led to Smurfit Packaging Corp. and its subsidiary,

Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment Inc.

 

More collusion.

 

Another discovery was that, like the CIA, Sequoia Pacific operates

through a number of dummy front companies. For example, two Florida

election execs, Glenn Boord and Ralph Escudero, pled guilty to

conspiracy to compound a felony (public bribery), who had owned a

paper voting-machine company called Uni-lect, which was just a front

for Sequoia Pacific.

 

Pasquale " Rocco " Ricci's company, International Voting Machines, was

also really Sequoia Pacific. So too was Harold Webb's Garden State

Elections. (And also Herb Webb's Elec-tec.)

 

Webb, a New Jersey elections equipment executive who participated in

the bribery and kickback scheme that resulted in the conviction of

Fowler, also played a key role in the infamous Martin County, Florida

drama over Republican absentee ballots in the 2000 election.

 

New Jersey election services companies controlled by Webb were key

suppliers to Martin County, Florida, which calls into question the

version of events surrounding the tampering with absentee ballot

applications testified to by Republican Party operatives in court in

2000.

 

In counties where their name never surfaced, Sequoia supplied both

computer and punch card systems, and used tabulating machines from

Sequoia Pacific disguised as being from other vendors, and used the

same (doctored) machines as Louisiana, supplied by the same 'shadowy'

sources.

 

When a reporter for the Fresno Bee interviewed Sequoia's chief

executive, the reporter told us later he had been " taken aback by his

secretive nature. " In truth, Sequoia's chief executive has a lot to be

secretive about…

 

As we will see next week, the company has decades-long ties to the

Rockefeller Family, as well as to a very private organization, the

bete noire of " conspiracy theorists " everywhere, the Bilderberger

Group. During the endless cable news coverage of the Presidential

Election, any of these stories would make an interesting and colorful

item.

 

Funny how no one in the major media let slip a word. But not `funny'

ha-ha.

 

Funny strange.

 

 

 

NEXT WEEK: WHEN VOTING GOES HIGH TECH

 

How would you feel if your vote for President first got 'passed by'

international gamblers, Zurich currency manipulators, telecom

scandals, off-shore Channel Islands accounts in the names of

fictitious people, " untraceable shareholders, " Bahamian resort owners,

and supra-national financiers?