Black Box: RESEARCH THREAD -- Defense industry ties to voting

[BevHarris]

This is a huge topic. Too big and amorphous for one thread. Let's start with something that, when we tug on it, will lead to more:

VoteHere.

OK, it's time: Whazzup with VoteHere?

Hey, listen, it is really true that VoteHere turns up like a bad penny, everywhere you go. While I don't ascribe the commercial intent that Lynn Landes does to Avi Ruben (who wrote the Hopkins report, then was busted for an inactive position as a technical advisor to VoteHere, which Diebold said tainted the report) -- that report, written by four scientists, was accurate and did a lot of good. But we can't keep avoiding this strange little entity called VoteHere.

VoteHere showed up again when we investigated another little matter today. VoteHere shows up when you look into just about anything pertaining to the military-industrial influence in voting. Defense contractors have become just disturbingly enmeshed in the voting system at every single level, and why the hell is that?

What exactly does VoteHere sell? And where the Sam Hill is its revenue stream? Selling a handful of voting machines in Swindon England and the city of Suwannee, Georgia won't pay bills for long, and the deal with Sequoia can't have been all that lucrative.

Who is their financing coming from? Because the way I read this, VoteHere is swimming in a sea of red ink and is awash in powerful military types, like Defense Policy Board member Bill Owens (a director) and former CIA director Gates (a director).

I think the tiny player, VoteHere, may have a bigger role, and I'm mightily curious about its defense industry ties.

We are now providing a certain level of supporting research for investigative reporters. Those with the balls, smarts, and editorial support for true investigative work are few and far between, and I don't want to see these stories go away just because they can't do it all alone.

Your research is picked up and put into some private forums, visible only to reporters who are working on the story discreetly. They don't like to do things in groups, and need to break original stories. So, you may not see the impact of your research right away, but keep it coming. If we can flesh this out, we can perhaps hook a reporter into a deeper investigation of the role of the defense industry the voting industry, and figure out what the heck VoteHere is actually doing. At that stage, we'll cull the research, provide it privately for the forum, and invite a handful of the top researchers in to help get specific questions answered.

Hopefully.

Bev