Progressive Action New Hampshire

Just one lost vote away from divine actualization.

By now most people have heard of the wide-spread news that Romney’s eldest heir, Tagg Romney has possible, albeit, distance on paper, ties to a voter machine company that will supply electronic voting machines in Ohio.

Reports have come in from the establishment media and some other surprising sources, discounting the concern about this possibly serious conflict of interest.  The conservative Weekly Standard online goes out of its way to quote a Solamare spokesperson (Solamare is the funds investment firm that Tagg Romney founded) which can be read at snopes .com where also exists a very good breakdown of the relationship and the web of ties between Solamare, H.I.G. and the number of Romney campaign donors among the leadership of the firms mentioned.

But the snopes article, the Weekly Standard article (predictably) and the usually conspiracy probing left leaning Think Progress seem to be telling the children to quiet down and not worry.  Why must we not worry? Well, because the investors and Tagg Romney himself have told us not to that’s why. Don’t you feel better now?  Slightly better coverage was offered at Huffington Post, linked in the first paragraph where at the last portions of the article, experts name numerous concerns they have with electronic voting machines, in addition to the odd relationship and its creation at such an inappropriate time.

Yet as some mentioned in the Huffington Post article, its awfully odd that this relationship is allowed to persist even when given such attention.  Well, that attention, as many journalists are quick to point out comes from the wide, weird world of the “blogoshere” as if within one dismissive swoop of the hand, the illegitimacy of such sources is reduced to zero.  Romney and co.’s assurance to voters that he’ll play nice is good enough for major media outlets, why not the plebians?  The rabble may please sit down and shut up now.  Romney offers no explanation to the public, no money moves or relationships severed.  In fact the quiet of the Romney’s on this issue illustrates how quickly they want it to go away.  But as Brad says on BRADBLOG, problems naturally arise when a the most important public act is handed over to a private company that may have a distinct interest in seeing the elections go a certain way.

The people aren’t stupid, but apparently Romney and his media whore friends would like you to think so.  Brad takes the time and trouble to list some of the more egregious crimes and errors of the private vote machine industry and calls for national attention and immediate action on this issue.   We suggest that voting machines in every district in every state be challenged from now until they are removed and we return to an open more accountable, albeit slower old fashioned hand counting.  Yes, it takes longer, but sometimes speed isn’t as important as proper and honest.

Brad rails at the lastest TeeVee moron to parrot someone’s line, for who maybe we’ll never know, but it sure isn’t Lady Justice or Truth.

NBC News Election Expert Chuck Todd: Voting Machine Concerns are ‘Conspiracy Garbage

Todd was responding, no doubt, to the many folks who have been justifiably concerned of late, since it was discovered that a bunch of Bain Capital investors, led by Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, via a company called H.I.G. Capital (believed to stand for Hart Intercivic Group) took over control of Hart Intercivic, the nation’s third largest voting machine company, in 2011.

The Austin-based Hart company, according to VerifiedVoting.org’s database, supplies electronic voting machines and paper ballot tabulators that will be used to tally votes in the Presidential Election this year in all or parts of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

I offered my point of view about those concerns earlier this month, explaining that it was not just the private ownership of Hart’s machines by Romney backers which voters should be concerned about, but the private ownership of the similar systems in all fifty states that will once again be used to tabulate the results of this year’s Presidential Election with little — and very often zero — possibility of oversight by the public or even by election officials.

Read the rest on BRADBLOG