Election Issues

Amy Searcy, the Hamilton County Board of Elections Supervisor, is currently the chief spin doctor for the Romney campaign, continually discounting his ties to the Hart InterCivic vote counting company. Since the Columbus Free Press began its reporting on the Romney presidential campaign and Romney family ties between voting machine manufacturer Hart InterCivic, Searcy has stepped forward in the press and in social media to repair public perception about the security of these deeply flawed devices.

Searcy is quoted in the Washington Post saying that "Hart has nothing to do with" vote tabulation in Hamilton County. However, in public records obtained by the Free Press this past April, the Hamilton County Board of Elections confirmed that their vote tabulation hardware and/or software was "Hart InterCivic."

Election officials lie to cover the facts
Since the Columbus Free Press broke the story of Tagg, Mitt, HIG Capital and your e-vote, there has been a bi-partisan effort on the internet to restore faith in the system. There are Democrats who wish the Free Press would remain silent, fearing that exposure of these facts will demoralize their base and lead to low voter turnout. Pundits like Chuck Todd have used the phrase "conspiracy theory" and even gone so far as to say "The voting machine conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther garbage." An industry shill, Michelle Shafer, who currently works as media director for Scytl, a Spanish-based vote-counting company, and has worked for all but one of the major voting machine manufacturers, has replied via comment to our articles with additional falsehoods and misrepresentations.

The Free Press has previously reported, Scytl, a Barcelona based e-voting company will be counting votes in 26 states. They will be doing so through something called the Federal Overseas Voting Program or FVAP. FVAP is a program designed to allow military personnel and other overseas Americans to vote in their home districts seamlessly through electronically delivered absentee ballots.

Intercepting and changing these ballots, as well as voting electronically on behalf of service people that have no idea such a thing is happening, is something that Scytl is uniquely positioned to do because of their cellphone spyware sister company, CarrierIQ. These stolen votes, distributed throughout jurisdictions across the country, could become a critical component of any scheme to defraud the 2012 presidential election. By means of changing a relatively small number of votes, and laundering those stolen votes in the correct places, the net effect would be a near silent theft.

[Karl Rove] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
--Ron Suskind

Uncovering election fraud is hard work. It’s hard work mostly done by ordinary citizens, with occasional help from scientists and mathematicians, who, when faced with results that don't pass the “smell test,” intervene to offer explanations that can only point to fraud, corruption and incompetence.

As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt's “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney's campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal.

An interview with Jamia Shepard after the Ohio 2004 election (produced by filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman)from Elections at Risk:

Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that's partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House?

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 6. 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.

Secretary of State Jon Husted’s directive setting expanded statewide early voting hours for all three days before the election is long overdue, but the correct move for Ohio voters. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow a lower court’s order to stand, forced Secretary Husted to issue a directive establishing uniform expanded hours.

“The federal court essentially forced Husted into allowing these early voting days,” said Mike Brickner, director of communications and public policy. “Nevertheless, the end result gives all Ohio voters what they deserve — expanded access to the polls on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday prior to the election.”

“Secretary Husted should have acted much sooner to allow all Ohioans expanded early voting opportunities,” added Brickner. “Instead, he chose to extend the legal fights, leaving early voting undecided and wasting taxpayer dollars on unnecessary lawsuits.”

Husted’s directive allows early voting on the following dates and times:

Saturday, November 3, 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 4, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Monday, November 5, 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Electronic voting machines owned by Mitt Romney's business buddies and set to count the votes in Cincinnati could decide the 2012 election.

The narrative is already being hyped by the corporate media. As Kelly O'Donnell reported for NBC's Today Show on Monday, October 8, Ohio's Hamilton County is "ground zero" for deciding who holds the White House come January, 2013.

O'Donnell pointed out that no candidate has won the White House without carrying Ohio since John Kennedy did it in 1960. No Republican has EVER won the White House without Ohio's electoral votes.

As we document in the e-book WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION (www.freepress.org) George W. Bush got a second term in 2004 thanks to the manipulation of the electronic vote count by Ohio's then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell served as the co-chair of the state's committee to re-elect Bush/Cheney while simultaneously administering the election.

NPR reported that a federal appeals court on Friday reinstated in-person early voting in the swing state of Ohio on the final three days before Election Day, returning discretion to local boards of elections.

The ruling by the three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati came in a case targeting a state law that ends early voting for most residents on the Friday evening before a Tuesday election. The law makes an exception for military personnel and Ohio voters living overseas.

"The State’s asserted goal of accommodating the unique situation of members of the military, who may be called away at a moment’s notice in service to the nation, is certainly a worthy and commendable goal," the court ruled. "However, while there is a compelling reason to provide more opportunities for military voters to cast their ballots, there is no corresponding satisfactory reason to prevent non-military voters from casting their ballots as well."