"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."
Both The Nation and New York Times confirm the connection between the Romney family, Solamere and the Bain Capital investment in the voting machine company, Hart Intercivic, whose board of directors serve H.I.G. Capital.
"Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney.
The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes." Truth out added.
Looking beyond the well-documented Google choking laundry list of apparent fraud, failure and seeming corruption that is associated with Hart Intercivic, an ongoing Free Press investigation turned its attention to the key question of who owns the voting machine companies. The majority of the directors of Hart come from the private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. has been heavily invested in Hart Intercivic since July 2011, just in time for the current presidential election cycle. But who is H.I.G Capital?
Out of 49 partners and directors, 48 are men, and 47 are white. Eleven of these men, including H.I.G. Founder Tony Tamer, were formerly employed at Bain and Company, and two of those men, John P. Bolduc and Douglas Berman are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.
[...]
H.I.G. Capital employees have given $338,000 to Mitt Romney's campaign. That amounts to over $1500 per employee. Bain Capital, Mitt's former company, by comparison, only gave him $268,000. H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to the Romney Campaign. Clearly they are working really hard for their man. It appears that they will work even harder on election night. Although not boisterously promising to deliver states where their machines are to Romney as Wally O'Dell of Diebold did for Bush in 2004, they can alter hundreds of thousands of votes and swing the vote in the crucial swing state of Ohio.
Before all the Republicans scream that this is nothing more than a liberal conspiracy theory, keep in mind that there is NO oversight of these electronic voting machines. There is NO review of the software's source code, NO paper trail to use to confirm that the totals, NO way to be sure that these machines are NOT rigged, and are NOT magically changing say one in every 10 or 20 or whatever votes for President to Romney/Ryan or changing any other votes to favor a certain candidate. All you need to know is that these machines are black boxes and only the manufacturer knows how they really work. All it would take is someone on the inside to rig the machines, or worse, a backdoor or a single security flaw that a hacker could exploit that would allow them to change the results however they wanted. It would be no different than someone using a flaw in Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, whatever, to get into your device, snoop on everything, change your password to lock you out, delete your antivirus, etc., except that anyone, from insiders at the voting machine manufacturers, to foreign hackers, to 12-year-old /b/-tards from 4Chan.org, could potentially change the outcome of the election, and we have absolutely no laws or processes in place to deal with such a thing if it did happen, let alone a paper trail to fall back on.
So before you go "bah, AC is spouting liberal nonsense", just imagine some liberal hacker, or foreign government, or whatever you like, hacks these machines and flips the vote to Obama. Exactly what sort of cow would you have then? Imagine that some hacker records all the data, every single byte and keystroke, and dumps it all on the Internet 5 minutes after the swearing-in. How the hell are you going to get the guy out of office?! What would happen to America?
Maybe if you post this on the main forum, more people will read it.
Oh, wait...
posted by justread
on Oct 21, 2012
at 06:37:42 am
#
Any single aspect of an election system can have vulnerabilities, but the system as a whole, with the checks and balances of the individual aspects, is pretty sound.
This is especially true in Ohio where a democrat and a republican must always be together whenever handling machines, ballots, voting cards, etc...
posted by MaggieThurber
on Oct 21, 2012
at 04:56:07 pm
#
MaggieThurber posted at 04:56:07 PM on Oct 21, 2012:
Any single aspect of an election system can have vulnerabilities, but the system as a whole, with the checks and balances of the individual aspects, is pretty sound.
This is especially true in Ohio where a democrat and a republican must always be together whenever handling machines, ballots, voting cards, etc...
MaggieThurber posted at 04:56:07 PM on Oct 21, 2012:
Any single aspect of an election system can have vulnerabilities, but the system as a whole, with the checks and balances of the individual aspects, is pretty sound.
This is especially true in Ohio where a democrat and a republican must always be together whenever handling machines, ballots, voting cards, etc...
Got a video for you, Mags.
Yeah, none of those old ladies down at the BOE is capable of sleight-of-hand to pop a Trojan USB key in, right?
Keep in mind, those attacks are with access to the machines BEFORE the election.
Know of any voting machines that have "slept-over" with poll workers?
How about some sleight-of-hand during Election Day? Open up the locked door that protects the memory card on the machine, pop in a rigged, Trojan/virus infected card, lock it back up, vote, walk out, polls close, memory card is taken out and read, virus takes over BOE, and suddenly Loki and the Red Skull win the election. Hell, if the virus is in the central tabulator and not only are all the memory cards from the voting machines plugged into it, but the optical scanner is plugged into the central tabulator as well, then you get into wiping all the memory cards AND reprogramming the optical scanner.
You are aware of viruses like Stuxnet, yes? Care to tell me that it's impossible that someone hasn't figured out how to infect our voting equipment and tamper with the election?
And you accuse Republicans of being conspiracy nuts? As I said - it's the overall system of checks and balances, not just the machines.
Since you're such an expect on voting machines, why don't you stop complaining about certain manufacturers and tell us how you'd make the system better!
Go ahead...I'll wait.
posted by MaggieThurber
on Oct 21, 2012
at 07:30:32 pm
#
2 people liked this
Please tell me how your magic system of checks and balances is going to catch rigged electronic voting machines, first. You've twice asserted that "checks and balances" are in place to keep this sort of thing from happening.
The story has now hit that liberal media bastion, Forbes.
Good point on how if voting is so sacred that you Teapublicans can destroy ACORN and demand voter ID at the polls in order to protect it, why aren't you all crying foul over Romney owning one of the manufacturers who COUNT THE VOTES?
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 22, 2012
at 10:57:26 am
#
In response to the original post, those who count the votes do decide who gets electoral college votes, who then decide who get the win. Both sides fight to get any advantage they can.
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 22, 2012
at 01:57:44 pm
#
Linecrosser posted at 01:57:44 PM on Oct 22, 2012:
In response to the original post, those who count the votes do decide who gets electoral college votes, who then decide who get the win. Both sides fight to get any advantage they can.
And that advantange includes your guy and his family buying into a voting machine manufacturer who counts the votes.
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 23, 2012
at 11:33:16 am
#
And you would not have a single objection if Obama and his family were invested in a voting machine manufacturer, the directors of said company donated heavily to him, etc.?
Not really, I am sure there is someone in the company in either case that would expose any wrong doing.
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 23, 2012
at 01:15:21 pm
#
Linecrosser posted at 01:15:21 PM on Oct 23, 2012:
Not really, I am sure there is someone in the company in either case that would expose any wrong doing.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, sure.
1) The secret only has to stay secret until after the election.
2) Doesn't take a lot of people to write software.
Very optimistic of you to believe the truth will out. Yeah, it might, and then again, the whistle-blowers might end up in mysterious car or plane crashes, too. Or the truth outs 30 years later, well after the damage is done.
"Not really, I am sure there is someone in the company in either case that would expose any wrong doing."
The problem with that theory is that in a programming environment where a number of developers are working on a piece of software, it takes only one to build in a back door, or exploit and hide his work from the others. Assuming that someone would expose the wrong doing assumes that they can expose it all.
As a programmer in my past career, that is the one thing I have a big problem with on the electronic voting machines. The software of these companies should at least be reviewed and certified by the government, and auditing firms.
posted by glasscityguy
on Oct 24, 2012
at 11:41:56 am
#
1 person liked this
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 24, 2012
at 12:35:58 pm
#
glasscityguy posted at 11:41:56 AM on Oct 24, 2012:
"Not really, I am sure there is someone in the company in either case that would expose any wrong doing."
The problem with that theory is that in a programming environment where a number of developers are working on a piece of software, it takes only one to build in a back door, or exploit and hide his work from the others. Assuming that someone would expose the wrong doing assumes that they can expose it all.
As a programmer in my past career, that is the one thing I have a big problem with on the electronic voting machines. The software of these companies should at least be reviewed and certified by the government, and auditing firms.
If Obama or his family had a share of any voting machine company, the Republicans would be screaming "CONFLICT OF INTEREST! OBAMA IS STEALING THE ELECTION!" with the right-wing talk radio volume cranked to 11.
But since these clowns think "buffer overflow" sounds vaguely related to NASCAR, they don't care about this issue.
anonymouscoward posted at 07:43:26 PM on Oct 23, 2012:
Linecrosser posted at 06:36:00 PM on Oct 23, 2012:
You mean like how the media has yet to vet Obama about his past and seem to be doing it again?
BIRTHER! BIRTHER IN THE FORUM!
So now the word "past" equals "birth certificate?"
There is a whole lifetime after his birth.
If you're going down this road, I want to specifically see Romney's 2009 tax return. And he has NOTHING to hide behind, as his dad was the one who got the ball rolling on the whole tax return thing.
PA House Republican Leader straight up says the Voter ID law will allow Romney to win PA.
PARTY BEFORE COUNTRY!
Just wanted your input about Trump paying 5M for his school records and passport application, not what you think of the website or what they even posted about it.
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 24, 2012
at 08:28:25 pm
#
Oh and if you slap down the blaze you cant use moveon.org they are just as bad.
posted by Linecrosser
on Oct 24, 2012
at 08:29:13 pm
#
anonymouscoward posted at 08:24:30 PM on Oct 24, 2012:
anonymouscoward posted at 07:43:26 PM on Oct 23, 2012:
Linecrosser posted at 06:36:00 PM on Oct 23, 2012:
You mean like how the media has yet to vet Obama about his past and seem to be doing it again?
BIRTHER! BIRTHER IN THE FORUM!
So now the word "past" equals "birth certificate?"
There is a whole lifetime after his birth.
If you're going down this road, I want to specifically see Romney's 2009 tax return. And he has NOTHING to hide behind, as his dad was the one who got the ball rolling on the whole tax return thing.
The road that I went down was the road where I told you that it was YOU who brought up "birther," not the poster that you quoted. So I didn't actually lead us to Romney's 2009 tax return, I brought us to the fact that you read what you want to read, not what is written.
posted by justread
on Oct 25, 2012
at 06:27:13 am
#
