Why Is Repub Proprietary Software Used For Public Elections?

This from ArsTechnica.com:

A Florida appeals court has upheld a lower court decision that denies requests for an independent source code audit of voting machines used by Florida's 13th district, which suffered election irregularities in a highly controversial congressional race. The appeals court has chosen to support a lower court decision which asserts that forcing voting machine maker Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide source code access to independent security auditors would amount to "gutting the protections afforded those who own trade secrets."

Are you mother-f***ing kidding me? This is making me pig-biting mad. I'm about to blow a gasket here. All this talk about 'trade secrets' is just so much heaping, steaming horsesh**. Trade secrets my big fat lily-white ass.

The question is why is Republican, partisan-owned proprietary software being used for public elections?!?

Let me say it again:

Why is Republican, partisan-owned proprietary software being used for public elections?!?

Let me say it just one more time:

Why is Republican, partisan-owned proprietary software being used for public elections?!?

Christ on a crutch, y'all - that's the issue here!

In case anyone has forgotten, Chuck Hagel, former right-wing radio talk-show host and current Senator from Nebraska, was chairman of ES&S, and as of 2005, according to personal financial disclosure reports, continues to be a stakeholder in the company which counted the votes for his own campaign, resulting in the largest margin of victory in the history of Nebraska!

In January 2003, The Hill reported that "In a disclosure form filed in 1996, covering the previous year, Chuck Hagel, then a Senate candidate, did not report that he was still chairman of AIS for the first 10 weeks of the year, as he was required to do."

"Hagel's unrecorded stake in the voting systems company poses an apparent conflict of interest on election reform issues. Three companies, including ES&S, stand to make a large profits from election reform legislation enacted last year by Congress," Alexander Bolton reported.

But wait - there's more!

ES&S (originally DataMark) was originally financed and renamed AIS (American Information Systems) by the Ahmansons of California - a far-right fundamentalist evangelical family, whose money comes from a savings and loan fortune. Heir Howard Ahmanson, Jr. is a political donor in the mold of Richard Mellon Scaife. Ahmanson is a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement’s philosophy advocates, among other things, “mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.” The Ahmanson family sold their shares in AIS to the McCarthy Group, of which Chuck Hagel is a former owner and CEO and still holds between $1 and 5 million in stock.

Now, does any of this matter? Who cares about the political and religious affiliations of the owners of corporations? Not me -

UNLESS THEY ARE COUNTING (OR NOT COUNTING) MY VOTE!

It shouldn't matter, because our vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and as such has no business being privatized AT ALL - by anyone - much less by rabid unabashed wealthy political and religious partisans!!!!!

Please, let's quit talking about the software and who can or can't look at it and whether the machines have been hacked or are unreliable. This is a smoke screen that we've fallen for.

Any voting system must be owned by the people of the United States of America!

So, once again I ask:


Why is Republican, partisan-owned proprietary software being used for public elections?!?