Sunday, October 21, 2012

Chuck Todd Jumps the Shark Over Voting Machine Link to Romney Family

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From TruthOut

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House.

. . . As reported by Lee Fang of The Nation, Solamere was founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Papa Romney's campaign finance chair. Ann Romney and Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney are also invested. Mitt himself threw in $10 million "seed money" to get the fund going, and spoke personally to its first full investors conference. Solamere's public web presence has been reduced to a front page only, so a complete list of it's partners can not be found. But reportage by the New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire and the Nation have slowly given us a partial picture of which funds are being funded by Solamere. Some $232 million has been raised so far, according to SEC filings and industry publications.


The Brad Blog
The Austin-based Hart company, according to VerifiedVoting.org's database, supplies electronic voting machines and paper ballot tabulators that will be used to tally votes in the Presidential Election this year in all or parts of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

I offered my point of view about those concerns earlier this month, explaining that it was not just the private ownership of Hart's machines by Romney backers which voters should be concerned about, but the private ownership of the similar systems in all fifty states that will once again be used to tabulate the results of this year's Presidential Election with little --- and very often zero --- possibility of oversight by the public or even by election officials.

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. . . I've heard a lot of false equivalencies from the Villagers, but this one might just take the cake. There are very real concerns about technology proven to be easily hacked without any trail, reports in every election about machines recording votes which are proportionately different from votes cast, and more. In 2008, Tennessee officials went to jail for jacking around with voting and election integrity.
. . . On the other hand, the birther conspiracy theories have been widely investigated, debunked over and over again, and now are the province of people living their lives in a constant state of denial in order to soothe their racist feathers over the fact that a black guy is in the White House.
Simply put, Chuck, there is NO equivalence. None. Zero. . . .
~ Karoli on Crooks and Liars

Heres a simple litmus test for knowing if the Romney's owning a voting machine company stinks like a 4 day old mackeral;
If the names were reversed and it was the Obamas with a straight line financial connection and conflict of interest to the 3rd largest voting machine comany, machines that will play a large role in the 2012 elections, would the Reich wingers be screaming to the heavens about conflict of interest and conspiracies? You damn well know they would be.
This nation has been subjected to 4 YEARS of these wingnuts and their birther nonsense, and the MSM in complicit in spreading the insanity. Funny how the MSM refuses to do any actual investigative journalism into real issues such as this one, and concentrating on birther nonsense.
~ comment by Cthulu on Bradblog
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