DOJ and Election Manipulation (continued)

By Brad Friedman on 3/8/2010 6:02PM  

 

DOJ TO REQUIRE ES&S TO SELL OFF ASSETS FROM DIEBOLD MERGER CITING ANTI-TRUST CONCERNS

The Department of Justice's Anti-trust division has determined that the purchase of Premier Election Solutions, Diebold Inc.'s recently renamed e-voting division, by Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), has resulted in a voting machine monopoly. The DoJ and nine states that have joined in a lawsuit are suing to require ES&S to divest of the assets gained in the bargain-basement priced purchase of Diebold's e-voting outfit last September.

The merger with Diebold/Premier, ES&S's second largest competitor, had given ES&S, a private corporation which already controlled some 50% of U.S. elections with its electronic voting systems, a full 70% control of the votes cast in this country. The acquisition had been opposed by election integrity organizations, Hart Intercivic (a much smaller Austin-based competitor), the New York Times' editorial board, and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and was being investigated by 14 different states along with the DoJ's anti-trust division...

A settlement has been struck, pending approval by a federal judge, between the DOJ, nine states, and ES&S requiring that the private company find a DoJ-approved purchaser of the Diebold/Premier assets. Prior to the $5 million sale to ES&S, Diebold had been searching for a buyer for a number of years, even as it faced investigations by the SEC and the DoJ, share-holder class action suits, and a number of legal battles with states and country jurisdictions around the country after voting systems were found to have failed or in violation of federal and state standards. Diebold purchased the election division from Global Election Systems in 2002 for the price of $25 million.

The proposed settlement, signed by the DoJ, ES&S, and representatives of state attorneys general in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Washington has been posted here [PDF].

An AP report on the potential lawsuit by the DoJ last week noted that "As a privately held company, ES&S issues no financial reports. It didn't tell the Justice Department about the Diebold deal because the transaction wasn't big enough to trigger the federal law that requires the government to be informed of big mergers before they are completed."

The article added that a Congressional Research Service report found the merger had given ES&S "a presence in 90 percent of the states" making it the "sole source" for election systems in "at least 20," given them "a market share three or more times that of its closest competitor."
AP's coverage of today's news can be found here.

The DoJ-ordered unwinding of the merger, however, will do little to ensure the accuracy or ability of citizens to oversee their own elections run on unobservable, easily manipulated, oft-failed electronic voting systems which use secret software made by private corporations to count votes in our public elections.

Just one recent example of the dangers of easily manipulated e-voting systems made by ES&S, Diebold, and others can be found in the current federal trial, now ongoing in Clay County, KY, of six top election officials who are alleged, as we reported last week, to have manipulated election results by flipping votes on ES&S voting machines, without the knowledge of voters, as part of a decades-long election rigging scheme.

UPDATE: The DoJ's announcement of the requirement and proposed settlement is now posted here...
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DOJ: Courts could harm Afghan effort

Admittedly, Bush and Cheney's GWOT is a fraud. We all know it, if we are honest with ourselves. 

As a born and raised American, hailing from the deep south, I want to be on the moral side of thing for a change. 

As far as I am concerned, everyone who was responsible for the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, in any way,  should be arrested and tried for murder.

Those who are responsible for the war of aggression against Iraq should receive the same justice. 

Anyone who covers for the international war criminals in the Bush administration can only be considered as complicit after the fact and guilty of obstruction of justice.

By: Josh Gerstein April 11, 2009 03:02 PM EST

President Obama’s effort to pursue a new strategy against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban could be jeopardized if some prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan are allowed access to American courts, the Justice Department argued in a court filing Friday. Government lawyers made the claim in a motion asking for permission to pursue an expedited appeal of a judge’s ruling last week that prisoners who claim they were captured outside Afghanistan should be permitted to pursue habeas corpus challenges to their detention. Judge John Bates ruled April 2 that he would hear cases from non-Afghan prisoners who claimed they were captured outside Afghanistan and taken to the Bagram Airfield near Kabul. “Drawing a jurisdictional line at the border of Afghanistan creates a disincentive to move to Bagram individuals captured in Pakistan, where there is neither a temporary screening and processing facility nor a long-term theater internment facility,” Justice Department lawyer Jean Lin wrote. “This jurisdictional line also provides the enemies of the United States an incentive to conduct operations from Pakistan, using it as a safe haven and using the U.S. court system as a tactical weapon.” The Justice Department noted Obama’s statement last month describing Afghanistan and Pakistan as “as two countries but one challenge.” Friday’s filing notified the court that Solicitor General Elena Kagan had authorized an appeal in the case. The motion suggested that allowing the prisoners to be heard now would also interfere with a 180-day review Obama ordered in January into policies regarding interrogation and detention of terror suspects. Lin asked Bates to suspend his order, arguing that proceeding with the cases “would impose serious practical burdens on, and potential harm to, the Government and its efforts to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. “There is no dispute that Bagram Airfield is in a theater of war where the Nation’s troops are in harm’s way,” she wrote. “Responding to these petitions – and to the potentially large number of other petitions filed by Bagram detainees who may now allege that they are similarly situated – would divert the military’s attention and resources at a critical time for operations in Afghanistan, potentially requiring accommodation and protection of counsel and onerous discovery.” The Obama administration’s stance in the case is aligned with that of the Bush Administration—and infuriating to detainee lawyers. The new administration’s latest arguments, that interference by the courts could aid America’s enemies, is provoking more anger. An attorney for Bagram detainees, Tina Foster, said in a statement Friday that the Obama team’s action signaled “a particularly dark day in American history.” She said Obama was betraying his rhetoric about returning to the rule of law. “The time has long since passed for issuing platitudes about ending torture, rendition, and indefinite detention. President Obama today becomes complicit in the unjust and illegal detention of our clients — who deserve better,” Foster said. In his ruling, Bates said the prisoners’ claim that they were captured outside Afghanistan was pivotal. He said the government should not be permitted to deposit inmates at Bagram simply to put them beyond the reach of the courts. Lin countered that none of the prisoners claimed to have been captured or held previously in a place where they would have had recourse to U.S. courts. The government’s latest motion hints at a possible compromise to be pursued before the appeals court: considering Pakistan to be part of the Afghan theater of war. That would allow prisoners detained in Pakistan to be held at Bagram without recourse, but still permit those whisked there from around the world to bring challenges to their detention.

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