Aa
For anyone interested, an email I just received
Dear Friend,
If this year's presidential election comes down to the electoral votes in
Ohio, the deciding votes could be cast on electronic voting machines
manufactured by a company - Hart Intercivic - with deep financial ties to
the Romney family.
Hart Intercivic is majority owned by H.I.G. Capital which controls two of
the five seats on the Hart Intercivic board. An investment fund with deep
ties to the Romney family and the Mitt Romney for president campaign,
H.I.G. Capital was founded by Tony Tamer, a major bundler for the Romney
campaign, and it is one of the largest partners of Solamere Capital, an
investment fund founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney's
chief fundraiser from the 2008 presidential campaign. This makes the
Romney family part owner of the voting machine company, through it's
interest in H.I.G. Capital.
A 2007 study conducted by Ohio's Secretary of State showed that Hart
Intercivic's touch screen voting machines could be easily corrupted.
I just signed a petition telling the Department of Justice to not let
Republicans steal the election in Ohio with Romney-owned voting machines.
Click on the link below to find out more and sign the petition.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/romney_ohio/?r_by=-6404172-9m58a6x&rc=mailto1
If this year's presidential election comes down to the electoral votes in
Ohio, the deciding votes could be cast on electronic voting machines
manufactured by a company - Hart Intercivic - with deep financial ties to
the Romney family.
Hart Intercivic is majority owned by H.I.G. Capital which controls two of
the five seats on the Hart Intercivic board. An investment fund with deep
ties to the Romney family and the Mitt Romney for president campaign,
H.I.G. Capital was founded by Tony Tamer, a major bundler for the Romney
campaign, and it is one of the largest partners of Solamere Capital, an
investment fund founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney's
chief fundraiser from the 2008 presidential campaign. This makes the
Romney family part owner of the voting machine company, through it's
interest in H.I.G. Capital.
A 2007 study conducted by Ohio's Secretary of State showed that Hart
Intercivic's touch screen voting machines could be easily corrupted.
I just signed a petition telling the Department of Justice to not let
Republicans steal the election in Ohio with Romney-owned voting machines.
Click on the link below to find out more and sign the petition.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/romney_ohio/?r_by=-6404172-9m58a6x&rc=mailto1
I'm confused. If this is in fact just part of a mutual fund, then no issue. I can honestly say I have very little idea what mutual funds my RRSP (same thing as a 401K I think) is invested in. Same thing with my sons' RESP (registered education savings plan). Couldn't tell you if my life depended on it.
If he owns a company that actually bought voting machines, I can see where this might be an issue
I'm very confused....anyone else? Or am I just having brain freeze from all the snow we got today.
If he owns a company that actually bought voting machines, I can see where this might be an issue
I'm very confused....anyone else? Or am I just having brain freeze from all the snow we got today.
Charles Sipkins, a crisis communications consultant serving as spokesman for H.I.G., told The Huffington Post on Monday that "Hart InterCivic has a long track record of supporting a fair and open democratic process." He added: "Any suggestions that the company might try to influence the outcome of election results are unfounded.”
One aspect of the story, as it has evolved online, ties H.I.G. to Solamere Capital -- a private equity fund founded by Romney's eldest son Tagg that serves as a de facto subsidiary of the Romney campaign.
But Sipkins told HuffPost that there is no connection at all between Solamere and Hart Intercivic. "Solamere has invested in a certain H.I.G. Capital fund," he said. "Solamere has no interest in the specific H.I.G. fund that invested in Hart Intercivic." He added that Solamere's total investment in H.I.G. represents 0.05 percent of H.I.G.'s total assets.
Sipkins wouldn't say what prompted H.I.G. to acquire the voting machine company. A contemporary press release quotes Neil Tuch, a managing director of H.I.G. who is now on Hart's board, as saying: “Hart InterCivic is a well-positioned, high-growth company with a great future."
One aspect of the story, as it has evolved online, ties H.I.G. to Solamere Capital -- a private equity fund founded by Romney's eldest son Tagg that serves as a de facto subsidiary of the Romney campaign.
But Sipkins told HuffPost that there is no connection at all between Solamere and Hart Intercivic. "Solamere has invested in a certain H.I.G. Capital fund," he said. "Solamere has no interest in the specific H.I.G. fund that invested in Hart Intercivic." He added that Solamere's total investment in H.I.G. represents 0.05 percent of H.I.G.'s total assets.
Sipkins wouldn't say what prompted H.I.G. to acquire the voting machine company. A contemporary press release quotes Neil Tuch, a managing director of H.I.G. who is now on Hart's board, as saying: “Hart InterCivic is a well-positioned, high-growth company with a great future."
Is this a new hoax, because it doesn’t look like the original one?
The news is starting to spread~
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/pro-romney-firm-voting-machines_n_2006697.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Pro-Romney Firm's Purchase Of Voting Machine Company Raises Alarms
A private equity company run by fervent supporters of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney bought the third-largest voting machine company in the country last July, raising concerns about the appearance of impropriety, if not the possibility of impropriety itself.
Apprehension that Romney supporters could be literally buying votes has been burbling on left-wing blogs since Freepress.org, an alternative website based in Columbus, Ohio, reported late last month about H.I.G Capital's purchase of Hart Intercivic.
H.I.G. Capital is a Miami-based private equity fund that manages $8.5 billion in capital. Hart Intercivic is a company exclusively in the business of manufacturing and programming voting systems.
Charles Sipkins, a crisis communications consultant serving as spokesman for H.I.G., told The Huffington Post on Monday that "Hart InterCivic has a long track record of supporting a fair and open democratic process." He added: "Any suggestions that the company might try to influence the outcome of election results are unfounded.”
But there are elements to the story that nonetheless alarm election experts.
H.I.G. Capital's co-founder, Anthony Tamer, previously worked at Bain & Company, the global consulting giant where Romney was once CEO. Eight of the company's managing directors came from Bain as well. Tamer and his wife are major Romney donors, having each contributed $50,000 to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Tamer has also donated $75,000 to the Romney Victory Fund.
And Tamer has plenty of company at H.I.G. Although it isn't a particularly big firm, H.I.G.'s directors have collectively given so much money to Romney that their company is the sixth biggest contributor to all Romney committees, as calculated by opensecrets.org.
Almost all of their 2012 contributions, in fact, went either to Romney or to the Republican National Committee.
Hart Intercivic, meanwhile, provides voting machines for 370 jurisdictions around the nation, with about 17.7 million registered voters.
One of the jurisdictions with Hart Intercivic equipment is Hamilton County -- which includes Cincinnati, the third-largest city in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio.
Election experts say that because Hamilton County -- like many but not all jurisdictions using Hart Intercivic machines -- requires paper trails and random post-election audits, it is exceedingly unlikely that a voting machine company could get away with manipulating results, even if it were to take the extraordinary step of trying to do so.
But several critics of the country's privatized and lightly regulated vote-counting system criticized the purchase nonetheless.
"This is just not passing the smell test at all," said Bev Harris, founder of the nonprofit election watchdog, BlackBoxVoting.org. "They're Romney guys."
She said Hart Intercivic machines are considered among the more hackable -- but that's not really the point here. "There is no way to secure a system from its administrator," she said.
"There are thousands of venture capital and private equity firms," Harris said. Why then, she asked, would one of the very few major voting companies in the country fall into the hands of a firm that happens to be associated with a presidential candidate?
"I think it looks bad," said Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Actually trying to steal the election "would be pretty risky," he said. "That's not to say it couldn't be done."
More critically, he said, "it points to some of the problems with having private companies essentially running our elections."
Companies that are actively partisan would ideally not own voting machine companies, he said. "But if you're going to have private companies owning these machines and programming them and essentially counting the votes, it's really hard to start drawing these lines."
Pam Smith, president of the election watchdog VerifiedVoting.org, questioned the timing. "If a company's going to do that, that's the kind of thing you do after an election, not before," she said. "You don't just want to avoid impropriety. You want to avoid the whiff of impropriety. So why would you want to give rise that something that could generate doubt in the outcome?"
Smith said she's still not particularly concerned about Hart Intercivic. Her concern is over any equipment from any company that doesn't leave an auditable trail. "We need systems and rules in place that makes it irrelevant who owns the voting machines," she said. "Some of them are recountable and some of them are not. And that's the situation that's really unacceptable."
According to Verified Voting, there are 118 jurisdictions with as many as 7.8 million registered voters whose votes are counted by Hart Intercivic machines that produce no paper records whatsoever -- in other words, no way to make sure they've been counted properly. That includes jurisdictions in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
One aspect of the story, as it has evolved online, ties H.I.G. to Solamere Capital -- a private equity fund founded by Romney's eldest son Tagg that serves as a de facto subsidiary of the Romney campaign.
But Sipkins told HuffPost that there is no connection at all between Solamere and Hart Intercivic. "Solamere has invested in a certain H.I.G. Capital fund," he said. "Solamere has no interest in the specific H.I.G. fund that invested in Hart Intercivic." He added that Solamere's total investment in H.I.G. represents 0.05 percent of H.I.G.'s total assets.
Sipkins wouldn't say what prompted H.I.G. to acquire the voting machine company. A contemporary press release quotes Neil Tuch, a managing director of H.I.G. who is now on Hart's board, as saying: “Hart InterCivic is a well-positioned, high-growth company with a great future."
The story is somewhat reminiscent of the time in August 2003 when Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of the then-voting machine giant Diebold, Inc., sent an email to would-be donors to President George W. Bush's reelection campaign, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/pro-romney-firm-voting-machines_n_2006697.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Pro-Romney Firm's Purchase Of Voting Machine Company Raises Alarms
A private equity company run by fervent supporters of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney bought the third-largest voting machine company in the country last July, raising concerns about the appearance of impropriety, if not the possibility of impropriety itself.
Apprehension that Romney supporters could be literally buying votes has been burbling on left-wing blogs since Freepress.org, an alternative website based in Columbus, Ohio, reported late last month about H.I.G Capital's purchase of Hart Intercivic.
H.I.G. Capital is a Miami-based private equity fund that manages $8.5 billion in capital. Hart Intercivic is a company exclusively in the business of manufacturing and programming voting systems.
Charles Sipkins, a crisis communications consultant serving as spokesman for H.I.G., told The Huffington Post on Monday that "Hart InterCivic has a long track record of supporting a fair and open democratic process." He added: "Any suggestions that the company might try to influence the outcome of election results are unfounded.”
But there are elements to the story that nonetheless alarm election experts.
H.I.G. Capital's co-founder, Anthony Tamer, previously worked at Bain & Company, the global consulting giant where Romney was once CEO. Eight of the company's managing directors came from Bain as well. Tamer and his wife are major Romney donors, having each contributed $50,000 to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Tamer has also donated $75,000 to the Romney Victory Fund.
And Tamer has plenty of company at H.I.G. Although it isn't a particularly big firm, H.I.G.'s directors have collectively given so much money to Romney that their company is the sixth biggest contributor to all Romney committees, as calculated by opensecrets.org.
Almost all of their 2012 contributions, in fact, went either to Romney or to the Republican National Committee.
Hart Intercivic, meanwhile, provides voting machines for 370 jurisdictions around the nation, with about 17.7 million registered voters.
One of the jurisdictions with Hart Intercivic equipment is Hamilton County -- which includes Cincinnati, the third-largest city in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio.
Election experts say that because Hamilton County -- like many but not all jurisdictions using Hart Intercivic machines -- requires paper trails and random post-election audits, it is exceedingly unlikely that a voting machine company could get away with manipulating results, even if it were to take the extraordinary step of trying to do so.
But several critics of the country's privatized and lightly regulated vote-counting system criticized the purchase nonetheless.
"This is just not passing the smell test at all," said Bev Harris, founder of the nonprofit election watchdog, BlackBoxVoting.org. "They're Romney guys."
She said Hart Intercivic machines are considered among the more hackable -- but that's not really the point here. "There is no way to secure a system from its administrator," she said.
"There are thousands of venture capital and private equity firms," Harris said. Why then, she asked, would one of the very few major voting companies in the country fall into the hands of a firm that happens to be associated with a presidential candidate?
"I think it looks bad," said Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Actually trying to steal the election "would be pretty risky," he said. "That's not to say it couldn't be done."
More critically, he said, "it points to some of the problems with having private companies essentially running our elections."
Companies that are actively partisan would ideally not own voting machine companies, he said. "But if you're going to have private companies owning these machines and programming them and essentially counting the votes, it's really hard to start drawing these lines."
Pam Smith, president of the election watchdog VerifiedVoting.org, questioned the timing. "If a company's going to do that, that's the kind of thing you do after an election, not before," she said. "You don't just want to avoid impropriety. You want to avoid the whiff of impropriety. So why would you want to give rise that something that could generate doubt in the outcome?"
Smith said she's still not particularly concerned about Hart Intercivic. Her concern is over any equipment from any company that doesn't leave an auditable trail. "We need systems and rules in place that makes it irrelevant who owns the voting machines," she said. "Some of them are recountable and some of them are not. And that's the situation that's really unacceptable."
According to Verified Voting, there are 118 jurisdictions with as many as 7.8 million registered voters whose votes are counted by Hart Intercivic machines that produce no paper records whatsoever -- in other words, no way to make sure they've been counted properly. That includes jurisdictions in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
One aspect of the story, as it has evolved online, ties H.I.G. to Solamere Capital -- a private equity fund founded by Romney's eldest son Tagg that serves as a de facto subsidiary of the Romney campaign.
But Sipkins told HuffPost that there is no connection at all between Solamere and Hart Intercivic. "Solamere has invested in a certain H.I.G. Capital fund," he said. "Solamere has no interest in the specific H.I.G. fund that invested in Hart Intercivic." He added that Solamere's total investment in H.I.G. represents 0.05 percent of H.I.G.'s total assets.
Sipkins wouldn't say what prompted H.I.G. to acquire the voting machine company. A contemporary press release quotes Neil Tuch, a managing director of H.I.G. who is now on Hart's board, as saying: “Hart InterCivic is a well-positioned, high-growth company with a great future."
The story is somewhat reminiscent of the time in August 2003 when Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of the then-voting machine giant Diebold, Inc., sent an email to would-be donors to President George W. Bush's reelection campaign, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''
Thx for that link...This guy Nate is really smart huh?! I remember him in the 2008 election and he was frighteningly close to the actual outcome of that race...We'll see...But his analysis does affirm my belief that the President will be re-elected and that makes me content:)...
I beg to differ. FIVE %? Heck, 3% are undecided!
LMAO el....thats funny!!!
We'll have to just wait and see I guess. If OH goes red, that's going to be something for our camp.
LMAO el....thats funny!!!
We'll have to just wait and see I guess. If OH goes red, that's going to be something for our camp.
HAHA! You're just cracking me up today!...
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╚╚╝╚╝╚╩═╩═╝╚═╩══╩══╩══╝… 2012
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 50% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns the vote from 46%. One percent (1%) prefers some other candidate, and two percent (2%) are undecided.
Swing State Tracking: Romney 49%, Obama 46%
Ohio: Obama 49%, Romney 48%
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 48%
Virginia: Romney 50%, Obama 47%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Ohio: Obama 49%, Romney 48%
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 48%
Virginia: Romney 50%, Obama 47%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
50-45 is not neck and neck TO ME...and the poll that says 47-47 was on October 17th. It's not relevant anymore......
Just read an article from your lovely liberal site, thinkprogress that discredits this voting machine junk.
Ill take a look, thanks mike.
Ms P...
Ohio '12 President General Election
Barack Obama 50%
Mitt Romney 45%
Don't know 3%
Someone else 1%
Quinnipiac University/CBS News 10/17/2012-10/20/20121548 likely votersOhio '12 President General Election
Barack Obama 47%
Mitt Romney 47%
Undecided 3%
Refused 2%
Gary Johnson 1%
That looks pretty neck and neck to me??
Ms P...
Ohio '12 President General Election
Barack Obama 50%
Mitt Romney 45%
Don't know 3%
Someone else 1%
Quinnipiac University/CBS News 10/17/2012-10/20/20121548 likely votersOhio '12 President General Election
Barack Obama 47%
Mitt Romney 47%
Undecided 3%
Refused 2%
Gary Johnson 1%
That looks pretty neck and neck to me??
I always look to Nate Silver for analysis. Like him or not - the guy is a bona fide genius when it comes to this stuff.
If you haven't been to his site I urge you to take a look.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/
If you haven't been to his site I urge you to take a look.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/
As of October 22nd, based on your link, they are not neck and neck in Ohio
Um...may want to look at this data. Ohio is neck and neck.
http://www.politico.com/p/2012-election/polls/president/ohio/ohio-12-president-general-election-148
http://www.politico.com/p/2012-election/polls/president/ohio/ohio-12-president-general-election-148
Ohio FiveThirtyEight Projections
Dem Rep Margin
Polling average 48.2 45.3 Obama +2.9
Adjusted polling average 47.7 45.8 Obama +1.9
State fundamentals 47.4 46.2 Obama +1.2
Now-cast 47.7 45.8 Obama +1.9
Projected vote share ±3.6 50.4 48.3 Obama +2.1
Chance of winning 72% 28%
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/
Dem Rep Margin
Polling average 48.2 45.3 Obama +2.9
Adjusted polling average 47.7 45.8 Obama +1.9
State fundamentals 47.4 46.2 Obama +1.2
Now-cast 47.7 45.8 Obama +1.9
Projected vote share ±3.6 50.4 48.3 Obama +2.1
Chance of winning 72% 28%
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/
Wasnt it not long ago that someone said the President had Ohio in the bag, and how you're scrambling over this? LOL Wow....
Signed!
I put this out for anyone who might want to sign it and pass it along. We have indeed already discussed the topic.
Obama ain't gonna lose. Have you not heard! Yes, I will sign the petition as well.
Just a ploy they can use if Obama loses.
???
That's pretty much the same thing we've already seen?
Funny, this email doesn't mention Tagg BUYING actual machines anymore? What happened to that part of the story?
I think it's probably fair to chalk this one up to not credible. STILL not one peep from the mainstream media. Sorry,,,not buying it's an issue.
That's pretty much the same thing we've already seen?
Funny, this email doesn't mention Tagg BUYING actual machines anymore? What happened to that part of the story?
I think it's probably fair to chalk this one up to not credible. STILL not one peep from the mainstream media. Sorry,,,not buying it's an issue.
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