Diebold's Revenge Mainstream Media has conspired to cover up election fraud

[Guest guest]

S

Wed, 8 Mar 2006 15:50:05 -0800 (PST)

Diebold's Revenge Mainstream Media has conspired to cover up

the fact there was election fraud

 

 

Diebold's Revenge

It figures - are they ALL crooks? The facts are there.

check out the files electionfraud2004/

 

 

The fact is the Mainstream Media has conspired to ignore the fact

the election results for the last 3 elections were fraudulently altered.

http://www.laweekly.com/news/12809/diebolds-revenge/

 

 

 

Diebold's Revenge

Written by CHRISTINE PELISEK

 

Steve Cooley goes after a whistleblower What would you call a

well-meaning employee at a law firm handling Diebold’s legal

strategies who leaks key documents outlining problems with voting

machines to the secretary of state and a newspaper reporter?

 

If you’re Steve Cooley, L.A. County’s district attorney,

you’d call him a thief and charge him with three felonies. If

you’re an expert in a state law that protects employees who rat out

potentially dangerous and illegal conduct, you’d call him a

whistleblower.

 

“The issue is that he shouldn’t have been charged at all,�

said Louis Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project,

a nonprofit whistleblower protection organization in Washington, D.C.

“It really is against public policy to bring felony charges against

a whistleblower who is alleged to have brought forward information

about election misconduct.�

 

But Cooley did just that on February 21 when his office charged

Stephen Heller, 44, with felony access to computer data, commercial

burglary and receiving stolen property. The New York native could face

up to three years in prison if convicted.

 

“This is basically a man who allegedly hacked into private

files,� said D.A. spokesperson Jane Robison. “We are alleging that

he stole computer files. If you are an attorney you have every reason

to believe that the information is guarded. Attorney-client privilege

is sacrosanct.�

 

Heller became the focus of the District Attorney’s Office in

2004 after he allegedly gave the secretary of state and the Oakland

Tribune memos the law firm Jones Day sent to its client, Diebold,

outlining possible state elections law violations of its electronic

voting machines.

 

Heller, an actor by trade, was working as a temporary word

processor on a three-month contract with Jones Day when he came across

the internal documents exposing irregularities in Diebold’s

electronic voting machines. He passed the documents along to an

intermediary, who has not been identified, who placed them in the

hands of Beverly Harris, the founder of a Seattle-based

elections-watchdog group called Black Box Voting Inc. Harris then

turned over the documents to Heller’s intended recipients in

Sacramento and Oakland.

 

The Diebold memos were published on the Tribune’s Web site in

April 2004, a month after voting irregularities surfaced in San Diego

and Alameda counties by voters who were turned away at the polls while

others had to use paper ballots.

 

In one memo, the law firm warned Diebold, before the March

primary, that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda

County, starting in 2002, violated California election law and broke

its $12.7 million contract. The lawyers also warned that Diebold faced

greater culpability if it knowingly violated California election law.

According to the memos, Jones Day also looked into whether

then†" California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley had the power to

investigate the company’s practices.

 

Five months earlier, in November 2003, the Secretary of State’s

Office discovered that Diebold had installed uncertified software on

its voting machines in 17 counties without notifying state officials.

Similar allegations became the centerpiece of a civil suit filed by

members of Black Box Voting, which was later joined by the state

attorney general, accusing Diebold of misleading Alameda County about

the legality and security of its touchscreen voting systems. Diebold

paid $2.6 million to settle the lawsuit in 2005.

 

Harris defends Heller’s actions. “He was concerned that he was

doing the right thing. If you are a good citizen, what are you

supposed to do? Nothing?� said Harris. “If citizens don’t stand

up when there is something clearly wrong, then we are in deep trouble.

We have to depend on our citizens to be responsible and that is what

he did. They should be giving him a medal. This is an effort by big,

powerful players who want to change the subject from what they did and

they also want to discourage anyone else from telling what they know.�

 

The state whistleblower law doesn’t protect the employee from

criminal prosecution. “There is nothing that can protect him from a

prosecutor who decides to prosecute other than a jury and a judge,�

said Clark. “The district attorney can do something to Mr. Heller

that perhaps Diebold couldn’t do.�

 

Robison said the District Attorney’s Office is not alleging

monetary gain.

 

“If there is no intention to profit from this then I think the

charges are outrageous,� said Clark. “I would be surprised if any

member of the Legislature who put the law on the books had in mind

someone who was taking information and making sure it went to

government officials in order for them to look at whether a crime had

been committed by a company.�

 

Jones Day did not file a civil case against Heller. In August

2004, the San Fernando Valley home Heller shares with his wife, three

cats and a dog was searched by D.A. investigators, who confiscated his

computer.

 

“Three felony charges against someone is the same as saying we

are going to destroy this person forever,� said Clark. “What kind

of job is this person going to get if he is convicted of a felony?

That is a very, very life-altering event in a person’s life.�

 

 

The Whistleblower Law

 

An employer may not make, adopt or enforce any rule, regulation or

policy preventing an employee from disclosing information to a

government or law-enforcement agency, where the employee has

reasonable cause to believe that the information discloses a violation

of state or federal statute, or a violation or noncompliance with a

state or federal rule or regulation. Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01

March 2006 )