The Right-Wing Connections to Voting Machine Companies
Have They Had Access To the Machines This Whole Time?
It’s no secret that our voting machines aren’t as secure as they could be or should be. Since the first introduction of electronic voting machines in the early 1970s, countless red flags have been raised by concerned election officials, cybersecurity experts, and lawmakers claiming that there are legitimate security concerns with our voting machines and software - especially after the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections which saw bizarre election results that were unexpected controversial, and highly consequential.
I will be exploring the history of the two largest companies that produce our voting machines - ES&S and Dominion - and examine some peculiar relationships between these companies and right-wing, often extremist, organizations. Buckle up, this one is going to interesting.
This story is a continuation of my previous post, in which I discuss the 2024 election results and potential interference. Click here to read more about it.
To begin, we’ll have to go all the way back to 1974 when the first electronic ballot scanner was introduced to our elections. Bob and Todd Urosevich, brothers from Omaha, Nebraska, formed Data Mark Systems in 1974 to sell and service equipment for Westinghouse Corporation. By 1979, the Urosevich brothers restructured their company into American Information Systems (AIS) and began producing their own ballot scanners for elections. One of the main investors in AIS was William Ahmanson of Omaha - a millionaire, philanthropist, and alleged friend of the Urosevich family.
Just two years later, the Council for National Policy was created with the goal of uniting conservative leaders in order to influence policy, politics, and culture within the United States. More importantly, it was founded as a forum for conservative Christians, especially Evangelical leaders. Established as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, it was allowed to engage in political advocacy and lobbying activities. Founding members of the CNP include Tim LaHaye (author of the Left Behind Chrsitian book series), Nelson Bunker Hunt, Howard Phillips, Paul Weyrich (founding member of another right-wing organization, The Heritage Foundation), Edwin Meese III (a Reagan Attorney General), Phyllis Schlafly, and Joseph Coors (founding member and major funder of The Heritage Foundation). Another founding member of the CNP was Howard Ahmanson, Jr., the nephew of William Ahmanson - the investor in American Information Systems which produced ballot counting machines. Howard Ahmanson, Jr. would go on to serve as President of the Council for National Policy from 1990-2000.
Nelson Bunker Hunt, a wealthy oil company executive and heir to the H.L. Hunt oil dynasty, also had a connection to the voting machine industry. His family had a majority stake in Business Records Corporation, a company that specialized in data processing and business information which pivoted to election technology in the 1970s. In 1984 BRC was purchased by Cronus Industries based in Texas. Cronus then purchased Computer Election Systems, Inc. (CESI) and merged BRC into CESI. In 1997, American Information Systems acquired the Election Services Division of Cronus, CESI, and reincorporated it as Election Systems & Software (or ES&S, as it’s known today). With this acquisition, ES&S was poised to become the largest voting system vendor in the U.S. In fact, they had such a monopoly over the industry that the Department of Justice delayed the merger on antitrust grounds until ES&S agreed to transfer its Optech products line (created by CESI in 1983) to Sequoia, another smaller voting machine company. In effect, the voting machine company that had a near-monopoly on electronic voting machines in the U.S. was formed from a merger between CESI (which came from a CNP member’s parent company) and AIS (also previously funded by a CNP founding member).
American Information Systems wasn’t the only contribution from the Urosevich brothers to the voting machine world. In 1995, Bob Urosevich founded I-Mark Systems, which was one of the first touch-screen voting machines to be used in the United States. Just two years later in 1997, Global Election Systems acquired I-Mark and Bob Urosevich became the President and COO of the company in July 2000. (Notably, it was GES touch-screen voting machines that were at the center of the 2000 Presidential election and 2004 Georgia election controversies, which I will discuss later on). In 2002 Canton, Ohio-based retail technology company Diebold, Inc. acquired Global Election Systems to create Diebold Election Systems. By now, the Urosevich brothers, who got their initial backing from right-wing influencers, had created voting machines and tabulators that counted 80% of electronic votes in the United States. Bob Urosevich became the President and COO of Diebold Election Systems the same year as the acquisition.
Let’s recap: over the course of about 20 years, election technology advanced tremendously, going from paper ballots and hand counts to fully electronic touch-screen voting. You may be saying to yourself “So what? Some Republicans know people who own voting machine companies, it’s not like they can do anything to use that to their advantage!” To that I would argue that you are mistaken. It would appear that on more than a few occasions these machines have malfunctioned during an election, overwhelmingly in favor of the Republican candidate.
Currently ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group, a private equity firm which became the majority owner of ES&S in 1997 following its founding. Omaha-based construction mogul Peter Kiewit purchased the Omaha World-Herald Company in 1962; between 1974 and 1986, Michael McCarthy held an executive position at Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc. McCarthy founded the McCarthy Group in 1986 with major financial support from the Peter Kiewit Foundation and the Omaha World-Herald Company.
In 1988, McCarthy met Chuck Hagel on a fishing trip and the two became great friends immediately. Hagel had worked as a congressional staffer and lobbyist during the 70s, and served as a campaign organizer for Ronald Reagan in 1980. He entered the private business sector soon after and cofounded Vanguard Cellular (later acquired by AT&T in 1999) which made Hagel a multi-millionaire quickly. At the request of McCarthy, Hagel returned to his native state of Nebraska in 1992 to become the President of the McCarthy Group and to serve as Chairman of American Information Systems. Hagel left AIS in March 1995, just shortly after The McCarthy Group jointly purchased a majority stake in American Information Systems alongside the Omaha World-Herald Company.
Just two weeks after Hagel left AIS, he announced his bid for the U.S. Senate. Michael McCarthy served as his campaign manager. It was later reported that Hagel owned between $1 million and $5 million in stocks with AIS and the McCarthy Group (which now owned voting machines and tabulators used in elections in Nebraska). Hagel won the election in what was described as a “stunning upset” - he became the first Republican senator elected in Nebraska in 24 years. Also of note was the fact that he seemingly won virtually every demographic group, including many majority black communities that had never voted Republican before. Incidentally, AIS tabulators counted approximately 85% of the total votes cast in that election. It seems at least a little bit odd that Hagel beat out his opponent, incumbent Governor Ben Nelson who had received 73% of the votes as Governor in 1994. While it may just all be coincidental, how convenient is it that Chuck Hagel was previously the Chairman of the company that made the voting machines used in his election, and that his campaign manager was the owner of that same company that held a majority stake in that same company? Hagel won re-election in 2002 with 83% of the votes, securing the largest victory margin in the history of Nebraska. As I mentioned previously, the following year in 1997 CESI (the company that merged with BRC, formerly owned by Nelson Bunker Hunt) bought out American Information Systems and renamed itself as ES&S. By the year 2000, ES&S and Global Election Systems controlled voting machines and tabulators in over 70% of jurisdictions in the United States.
Let’s recap: By the year 2000, ES&S and Global Elections Systems had a majority share of voting machines in use in the country. ES&S was a merger of AIS (created by Urosevich brothers, originally funded by the Ahmansons, then acquired by McCarthy and merged with CESI) and BRC (formerly owned by Nelson Bunker Hunt). Both of these companies had a direct line to right-wing influencers and organizations, specifically the Council for National Policy.
The Presidential election in 2000 was ultimately decided by a Supreme Court case revolving around issues within the vote counting process in Florida. Of particular interest were issues with voting equipment in Volusia County and Brevard County. In Volusia, one precinct showed a -16,022 vote total for Al Gore and +2,813 increase for George Bush, which triggered a false early call in the election by the press in favor of Bush. The error was reported to have been caused by a faulty memory card upload which was quickly deleted and corrected. Another error occurred in Brevard County, where 4,000 votes were subtracted from Gore then promptly corrected. In both counties, the machine used was a GES optical-scan machine. Although the VotoMatic punch card machine was the one at the center of the Supreme Court case (Bush’s team asked the court to stop the hand recount of ballots while Bush was in the lead), the issues that came up with the GES machines raised eyebrows and caused a commotion among election security experts. It is believed that approximately 1.5-2 million ballots were discarded in the election due to faulty, aged, or poorly designed ballots, which may have swayed the election toward Bush.
Coincidentally, three current Supreme Court Justices served on or assisted the Bush legal team in 2000: John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Roberts helped prepare Bush’s lawyers to present the case to the Supreme Court. Barrett played a more minor role, having only been involved for just a few weeks. Kavanaugh responded to a Senate questionnaire in 2018 stating that his work on the case related to recount efforts in Volusia County, the same county that was having issues with its GES machines. Did I also happen to mention that all three Justices are Federalist Society members, which is led by Leonard Leo - who also happens to be a prominent member of the Council for National Policy and on its Board of Governors? Look at that, another CNP connection to abnormal voting machine behavior and questionable election results! In fact, Leonard Leo is one of the most influential conservative fundraisers in the history of the Republican party. As the head of the Federalist Society, he has been able to help appoint SIX staunchly conservative Supreme Court Justices to the bench - Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh; all six also happen to be Federalist Society members.
Because the high-profile errors in the 2000 election in Florida exposed serious vulnerabilities in electronic voting machine systems, the bi-partisan Help America Vote Act was signed into law by George Bush in 2002. HAVA was introduced to Congress by Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) and Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), then brought to the Senate by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Interestingly enough, Bob Ney had close connections with Diebold and its former company, Global Election Systems. Rep. Ney had close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose firm received at least $275,000 from Diebold to lobby for its touch-screen machines and against paper-trail requirements in HAVA. Also, Rep. Ney’s former chief of staff, David DiStefano, received at least $180,000 from Diebold to lobby for HAVA and other election reform issues. Although there is no formal public record of Rep. Ney having known or met with Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold, Inc., it’s safe to assume that as a Republican congressman from Ohio, and being from the same district as O’Dell, the two likely would have been in the same social, political, and fundraising circles. The Help America Vote Act, when passed, allowed for the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines - meaning there was no mandated paper trail to be kept for hand recounts. Why would Diebold lobby for the exclusion of a paper-trail in an election reform bill? For a bill meant to make elections safer, fairer, and more secure, it would seem that having no paper trail would be a terrible idea - unless the goal was to exploit this. (Side-note: Ney and Abramoff were later sentenced to prison on corruption charges, though not related to Diebold or voting machines)
Just prior to the signing of HAVA in October 2002, The State of Georgia entered a contract with Diebold Election Systems in May 2002 to provide voting machines for the entire state, which cost Georgia $54 million. Georgia became the first state to implement a 100% electronic voting system statewide. The machines installed were Diebold AccuVote-TS DREs, which had a touch-screen interface, an internal memory card to store voting data, and most importantly, had no paper trail, or voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). Not surprisingly, the election held just months later in November 2002 was a “complete upset” for the Democratic party in Georgia. On the eve of the election, incumbent Governor, Roy Barnes, led the polls by nine to eleven points over Republican Sonny Perdue. Max Cleland, the Democratic Senate candidate, was up by two to five points over Republican Saxby Chambliss. However, Barnes lost to Perdue 46% to 51% - a swing of up to 16 points from the most recent poll. Cleland also lost to Chambliss 46% to 53% - a swing of up to 12 points. For historical context, the State of Georgia had elected a Democratic governor every election cycle since the Reconstruction era - until Perdue won in 2002. Shortly after the election, a Diebold technician named Rob Behler came forward and reported that when the AccuVote-TS machines were about to be shipped in the summer of 2002, the machines performed so erratically that the software had to be amended with a last minute patch. Instead of being transmitted via disk directly to the machine as is normal protocol, the patch was posted, along with the entire election software package, on an open-access file transfer protocol (FTP) site on the internet.
During the 2003 California special election, there were issues with the Diebold AccuVote-TS machines. A statewide audit revealed that all 17 counties using Diebold machines were running uncertified software versions, and on November 21, 2003, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley mandated that all e-voting machines must produce a VVPAT. In April 2004, a state panel unanimously recommended decertifying the AccuVote-TS machines.
In 2006, computer scientists at Princeton revealed that a computer virus could be easily implanted into a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine, allowing the votes to be “flipped.” Later Congressional testimony exposed that last-minute patches were installed in several Ohio counties, including Miami and Clermont, in the 2004 election. Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold’s electronic voting software contained “stunning flaws” and concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access.
Let’s now focus on Diebold Election Systems and exactly who is behind this voting machine company. After Deibold, Inc. purchased Global Election Systems in 2002 and renamed it to Diebold Election Systems, Bob Urosevich became the President and COO of DES. Walden O’Dell served as the Chairman and CEO of parent company Diebold, Inc. from 2001-2005. A Republican, O’Dell was no stranger to the conservative fundraising crowds, especially in his home state of Ohio. During 2003, O’Dell hosted and attended multiple fundraisers for Republican candidates in Ohio, around the country, and even fundraised for the Bush/Gore ticket; he was seen at a private event at Bush’s Crawford Ranch for his top fundraisers that year. In August 2003, O’Dell sent an invitation to a fundraiser at his mansion benefit George Bush’s re-election campaign. In it, he wrote “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” Perhaps this could have simply just meant that he was fundraising for Bush and wanted his fellow Republican Ohioans to pitch in. However, in 2003 Diebold was actively competing for contracts to provide voting machines in battleground states, one of which was Ohio.
It was around this time that Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell had ordered Diebold AccuVote-TS touch-screen voting machines to be used statewide in the 2004 election, despite objections from Ohio State Senator Jeff Jacobson following the discovery that there were security problems in the software. (It would later be reported in 2006 that Blackwell purchased stock in Diebold in 2005, which he refused to disclose previously)
.Ohio was a crucial swing state in the 2004 election for George Bush; in fact, his win in Ohio is what swung the election in his favor. Exit polls heavily favored John Kerry, and as luck would have it, similar issues to the ones in Florida in 2000, Georgia in 2002, and California in 2003 began to emerge. In Franklin County, Ohio, a machine falsely added 3,893 votes to Bush’s total in one precinct in which only 638 ballots were cast. The error was caught and corrected quickly. Some precincts reported negative vote tallies for Kerry, while others recorded record high turnout (up to 99% for some precincts, which was unusual given voting history of these areas). There were also reports of machine shortages and long lines in areas that favored Democrats. Although Bush won Ohio by 136,000 votes, a clear pattern of technical issues was emerging with Diebold machines. Blackwell blocked attempts to keep and count rejected ballots (rejected based on unfair voting laws he helped pass prior to the election) and refused a subpoena in an Ohio Supreme Court case contesting Ohio’s election results.
Unsurprisingly, J. Kenneth Blackwell had also been a member of the Council for National Policy since 1981, and is currently the Vice President of the Executive Committee of the CNP. Yet again, another Council for National Policy member involved with problematic voting machines!
Due to an overwhelming amount of election-related controversies surrounding Diebold Election Systems machines between 2002 and 2006, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2006 accusing Diebold of knowingly selling or leasing uncertified and non-complaint voting systems, bypassing mandatory procedural tests required by HAVA, and for misrepresenting to state and election officials that their systems were compliant with HAVA standards. Although the charges were substantial, it remained a civil case rather than a criminal case, and no major financial penalty was put onto Diebold. Facing ever-growing scrutiny over its machines and software, and Diebold’s executives being heavily involved with Republican fundraising, Diebold Election Systems strategically rebranded as Premier Election Solutions in 2007 and was eventually bought out by ES&S in 2009. After ES&S acquired Premier Election Solutions, their market share increased from 45% to 68%. As it did in 1997 when ES&S was formed from the merger of BRC and AIS, the Department of Justice stepped in on antitrust grounds, accusing ES&S of trying to capture a majority in the voting machine market. In March 2010 ES&S was forced to sell their Premier Election Solutions assets to Dominion, a relatively new voting machine company based in Canada. The following year, Dominion acquired Sequoia Voting Systems. these machines are still in use to this day in some states, though they are being phased out. By 2010, ES&S had a 45% share in the market, while Dominion Voting Systems had a 46% share; the other company, Hart InterCivic only had a 9% share.
Between 2010 and 2020, Dominion Voting Systems began rolling out its own systems to replace the ones obtained from Premier Election Solutions (including the controversial AccuVote-TS machines). This included the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, ImageCast X, and ImageCast Central. By 2016, Dominion machines served 70 million voters in 1,600 jurisdictions. In 2018, Staple Street Capital, based in New York, acquired a majority stake in Dominion Voting Systems. The founders of Staple Street Capital, Stephen D. Owens and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, were then appointed to Dominion’s board. Interestingly, Owens had previously served as a Managing Director of the Carlyle Group between 1997 and 2008. (To refresh your memory: the Carlyle Group is a multinational company that specializes in private equity, asset management, and financial services. One of its most prominent members was President George H. W. Bush, father of President George W. Bush; other members included past cabinet members of H.W. Bush and individuals related to Halliburton and other oil and defense companies.)
In July 2019, the State of Georgia awarded a $107 million state-wide contract to Dominion Voting Systems to install and use Dominion’s ImageCastX ballot-marking devices in every county in Georgia. By the 2020 election, Dominion systems were certified and used in parts of 28 states, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, and North Carolina. Dominion’s ImageCast Precinct tabulators were also used in many counties nationwide. These machines, unlike their predecessor AccuVote-TS, provided a VVPAT in order to meet security requirements.
The 2020 Presidential election became the most controversial election in history, even surpassing the criticisms of the 2000 election. Donald Trump, the incumbent President, lost to former Vice President Joe Biden 46% to 51%. Even prior to the election, Trump and his legal team had already started accusing the Democrats of cheating in the election. After his loss, his legal team worked tirelessly, filing lawsuits across the country claiming Dominion voting machines were vulnerable to manipulation and had “flipped” votes from Trump to Biden. They alleged software glitches or intentional coding to “flip” votes, backdoor access that enable remote tampering, and algorithms designed to dump votes for Trump and add votes for Biden, among other theories. Does this sound familiar? These are exactly the same issues that had been proven to have occurred in ES&S machines since at least 2000. Ironically (or perhaps even intentionally), the vast majority of election fraud claims centered on Dominion machines, not ES&S (which formerly owned the AccuVote-TS machines). It could just be a coincidence that a tsunami of lawsuits by Republicans were filed against Dominion in the first year the machines were used nationwide, even though they had no concern when they were benefitting from the exact same issues that plagued ES&S machines.
Following the election and Trump’s loss, one of his attorneys, Sidney Powell, filed four major lawsuits in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. She alleged that Dominion and Smartmatic were created to “rig” elections for Venezuelan dictator Huge Chavez, and then the 2020 elelection, claimed that these companies had algorithmic features to switch votes to Biden, and that the software had been manipulated to ensure a victory for Biden. She also alleged foreign interference from Germany, Venezuela, Iran, and China, and claimed that ballots were illegally duplicated and injected for Biden. All four lawsuits were thrown out of court based on the lack of evidence to support her claims. In August 2023, Sidney Powell was sanctioned in Michigan for filing frivolous lawsuits, and was later indicted in Georgia that same month under the RICO Act for participating in a criminal effort to overturn the election. That should have been the conclusion of the election fraud claims by Trump’s team; over 60 lawsuits were filed around the country, and all were dismissed due to a lack of substantial evidence. However, on the day after the January 6th insurrection, Powell’s team was able to illegally access the Dominion voting machines and software.
Sidney Powell, on behalf of the Trump legal team, helped organize and fund the Atlanta-based digital forensics company, SullivanStrickler, to be able to illegally gain access to the machines in Coffee County, Georgia. Without authorization from a court, Cathy Latham (chairwoman of the Coffee County Republican party) and Misty Hampton (elections director for the county) allowed SullivanStrickler into the Coffee County Election Office. While there, the team copied hard drives and system images for Dominion ImageCast tabulators, ballot marking devices, and memory card and election databases. Sensitive information was uploaded to cloud storage systems and was accessed via shared passwords and links. This led to the RICO charges against Powell and the other actors involved with stealing the information.
This was not the only successful attempt at illegally gaining access to the Dominion voting machines and software. In Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters singed off on the results of a risk-limiting audit which certified that there were no discrepancies in the election in Mesa County. Peters then began to meet with individuals involved with spreading the election fraud conspiracies, including Mike Lindell and Conan Hayes. In May 2021, Peters ordered the surveillance cameras monitoring the voting machines in Mesa County to be turned off, to be resumed in advance of the elections in August 2021. While the cameras were off, Peters allowed Conan Hayes and others to access the rooms where the voting machines were stored, and they were present during the process of installing software updates on the machines and recorded the process. Copies of sensitive information were made, including BIPS passwords and system images. This information was then presented by Mike Lindell, Tina Peters, and Ron Watkins (a Q-anon conspiracy theorist) at Lindell’s Cyber Symposium in South Dakota in August 2021. The images shared clearly identified that they were from the Mesa County office, which then prompted an investigation into Tina Peter’s involvement with accessing the information. Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for her role.
Despite the election security implications of Powell and Peters gaining access to the machines, there is still a valid concern, raised by experts, that these systems are still vulnerable to malicious attacks, even with the updates performed between 2020 and 2024. Could it be that Trump’s team was aware that the introduction of Dominion voting machines nationwide in 2020 would weaken their control over the election machines and the election process itself? Why would they solely focus on Dominion machines, and not the ES&S machines which had, for years, experienced the same problems they accused Dominion of? Despite his team and other prominent members shouting election fraud, they all acknowledged behind closed doors and in court that their claims had no merit. So why file over 60 lawsuits for something you know to not be true? The only answer I can come up with is that they wanted to gain access to Dominion machines in order to exploit them the same way they had exploited ES&S machines since 2000.
There is a LOT of circumstantial evidence here, and hopefully this alone will lead to further investigations that can deliver the proof needed for remedying the situation. Where are a few whistleblowers when we need them?!?
This is shocking. I guess I shouldn't be surprised on either end - the lack of standardization or uniformity in the technology, nor the scheming to get access, copy and exploit the technology.
The entire voting infrastructure needs to be overhauled - audited yearly, standardized, hardened and access-controlled to the level of a financial services business. It's appalling.