Romney family ties to voting machine company

[RecycleMichael]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/10/20/romney-family-investment-ties-to-voting-machine-company-that-could-decide-the-election-causes-concern/


Romney Family Investment Ties To Voting Machine Company That Could Decide The Election Causing Concern

It's 3:00 a.m. on November 7, 2012.

With the painfully close presidential election now down to who wins the battleground state of Ohio, no network dares to call the race and risk repeating the mistakes of 2000 when a few networks jumped the gun on picking a winner.

As the magic boards used by the networks go 'up close and personal' on every county in the Buckeye State, word begins to circulate that there might be a snafu with some electronic voting machines in a number of Cincinnati based precincts. There have already been complaints that broken machines were not being quickly replaced in precincts that tend to lean Democratic and now, word is coming in that there may be some software issues. The network political departments get busy and, in short order, discover that the machines used in Hamilton County, Ohio—the county home of Cincinnati— are supplied by Hart Intercivic, a national provider of voting systems in use in a wide variety of counties scattered throughout the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Colorado and Ohio.

A quick Internet search reveals that there may be reason for concern. A test conducted in 2007 by the Ohio Secretary of State revealed that five of the electronic voting systems the state was looking to use in the upcoming 2008 presidential election had failed badly, each easily susceptible to chicanery that could alter the results of an election.

As reported in the New York Times, "At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers." We learn that one of the companies whose machines had failed was none other than Hart Intercivic.

With television time to fill and no ability to declare a winner so that the long night's broadcast can be brought to a close, the staffs keep digging for relevant information to keep the attention of their viewers—and that is when it gets very real. It turns out that Hart Intercivic is owned, in large part, by H.I.G. Capital—a large investment fund with billions of dollars under management—that was founded by a fellow named Tony Tamer. While is is unclear just how much H.I.G. owns of Hart Intercivic, we do learn that H.I.G. employees hold at least two of the five Hart Intercivic board seats.

A little more digging turns up a few tidbits of data than soon become 'the story'. Tony Tamer, H.I.G.'s founder, turns out to be a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign,  along with three other directors of H.I.G. who are also big-time money raisers for Romney. Indeed, as fate would have it, two of those directors—Douglas Berman and Brian Schwartz— were actually in attendance at the now infamous "47 percent" fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida.

With that news, voters everywhere start to get this queasy feeling in the pits of their stomach.

But wait—if you're feeling a bit ill now, you'll want to get the anti-acids ready to go because it's about get really strange. To everyone's amazement, we learn that two members of the Hart Intercivic board of directors, Neil Tuch and Jeff Bohl, have made direct contributions to the Romney campaign. This, despite the fact that they represent 40 percent of the full board of directors of a company whose independent, disinterested and studiously non-partisan status in any election taking place on their voting machines would seemingly be a 'no brainer'.

To Mr. Bohl's credit, after giving a total of $4,000 to "Romney For President", it must have occurred to him that it might not look so good for a board member of a company whose voting machines are to be a part of the presidential election to be playing favorites—so he gave $250 to Barack Obama to sort of balance the scales.

Mr. Tuch? Not so much. Interestingly, Mr. Bohl lists himself as an investor at H.I.G. Capital for his Romney contributions but his far smaller donation to Obama was done as "Jeff Bohl, self-employed innkeeper". And finally, we learn that H.I.G. is the 11th largest of all the contributors to the Romney effort. Did I say "finally"? My bad...because there is, indeed, more.

Can you guess who is reported to have a financial relationship with H.I.G. Capital? Numerous media sources, including Truthout, are reporting that Solamere Capital—the investment firm run by Mitt Romney's son, Tagg, and the home of money put into the closely held firm by Tagg's uncle Scott, mother Anne and, of course, the dad who might just be the next President of the United States—depending upon how the vote count turns out, in our little tale, in the State of Ohio—have shared business interests with H.I.G. either directly or via Solamere Advisors which is owned, in part, by Solamere Capital, including a reported investment in H.I.G. by either Solamere Capital or Solamere Advisors.

Lee Fang, in his piece for The Nation exploring the government related activities of various companies in which Solamere has an interest writes- "Meanwhile, HIG Capital—one of the largest Solamere partners, with nearly $10 billion of equity capital—owns a number of other firms that are closely monitoring the federal government. "

While the Cincinnati scenario is —at this point—fiction, the rest of this story is all too true, including the part where the voting machines to be used in Hamilton County will be those provided by Hart Intercivic.And while I am not suggesting conspiracies or that anyone would get involved in any foul play here, most particularly the GOP candidate for President, how is it possible that so many people could exercise so much bad judgment?

The sanctity of voting in America is supposed to be one of our most important virtues. So concerned are we with a 'clean' process that James O'Keefe has made a career entrapping, video taping and destroying those sympathetic to Democratic Party candidates and causes who cross the line when it comes to the voting process. And that's just fine. If Mr. O'Keefe can legitimately expose someone engaging in voter fraud, he most certainly should call them out.

So, why would these individuals who serve on the board of directors of Hart Intercivic go out of their way to make a contribution to any political candidate given the critical importance of their company remaining above reproach when it comes to the political process? And why would those who run the company that owns Hart Intercivic be giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political candidate? And why would a political candidate and his family have a financial relationship with a company that owns a chunk of the voting machine company that will be counting the actual votes given to that political candidate or his opponent?

Keith Olbermann was suspended from his job at MSNBC for donating a couple hundred bucks to a local candidate that was a friend of his. Why? Because his employer required that journalists at the network stay free of having given such contributions to any candidate for all the obvious reasons.

Is it really too much to ask that those who control the voting machines that record and count the votes of  our elections be held to at least the same standard? Hopefully, everything will go swimmingly in Cincinnati on Election Day. And, if it doesn't, it will no doubt be the result of honest error.

Yet, because of this uncomfortable chain of ownership, we now find ourselves with one more headache among the many headaches that accompany the important work of choosing an American president and believing that the process was a fair one—particularly when such an election comes down to a very few votes as may well be the case on Election Day, 2012.Really, guys. You couldn't find anything else to invest in? You couldn't donate all those hundreds of thousands to charity rather than put it into political contributions so that your fellow countrymen would have no reason to ever doubt or question the results of so important an election—or any election for that matter, even if it's the choice of a county dogcatcher?

I truly wonder sometimes just what these allegedly smart people have inside their heads—or, more importantly, their hearts.

[erfalf]

Doesn't seem to be a problem here. 

http://myfox8.com/2012/10/23/guilford-county-voters-say-they-voted-for-the-wrong-candidate/

[Conan71]

This seems like a topic more appropriate for TTAC to start, not RM.

[Breadburner]

Already looking for excuses....!!!

[RecycleMichael]

This story was written and published in Forbes magazine. Damn liberals.

[erfalf]

Thought this story was a little too good to be true.  

One of these days something will stick.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tagg-romney-not-investor-voting-machine-company_657183.html

and even this says so:

http://thinkprogress.org/?p=1059171&preview=true&mobile=nc

The Obama campaign team is looking so hard for some nefarious connections. It's pretty incredible that Obama's admitted connections stir up no emotions from anyone. Call me Hannity all you want, but Obama's past is far more sordid than Romney's. I'd stick to policy if I was Obama.

[nathanm]

Did Obama say anything about this? Does the racist smile spewed over at Redstate make you think worse of Romney or lead you to believe that the "Romney campaign team" is looking hard for racist smile to say about the President?

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the Solamere is in fact an investor in HIG, which does in fact own Hart Intercivic. Not that I think that anybody is tampering with voting machines, that's just silly. Would be nice if they had paper trails, so we could actually check, though. It's a lot easier and cheaper to pay someone to call a bunch of minority voters and tell them their precinct has moved or pay an "election watcher" to challenge all the brown people and college kids. (Both of those things have actually happened, BTW. I am not, however, asserting that it is widespread.) It's even cheaper from their perspective to use taxpayer money to create purge lists of supposed noncitizens and/or felons, most of whom turn out to be neither. Hell, that one makes money.

So yeah, while I think that electronics of every kind need to be removed from the voting process until the software that runs them is made public and vetted by experts or at least disclosed like slot machine software, I don't think there's any widespread abuse of the system's vulnerabilities. Yet.

[erfalf]

Did Obama say anything about this? Does the racist smile spewed over at Redstate make you think worse of Romney or lead you to believe that the "Romney campaign team" is looking hard for racist smile to say about the President?

Give one example of a shady thing from the Romney campaign about Obama.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the Solamere is in fact an investor in HIG, which does in fact own Hart Intercivic.

HIG has over $8.5 Billion (with a B) under management in many, many different funds. I can't say for certain, but I highly doubt that Solamere is an investor in every single one. In fairness, it would be impossible to know as it is private, but highly unlikely considering Solamere only has $129 Million under management. Too little amount to commit to one fund manager like HIG. Gotta stay diversified.

And even if they did have an interest in the fund that invested in Hart, the amount of influence that would have would be 0% as an investor. For example, at the fund of funds I worked at, we would have an interest (minuscule) in say Solyndra (ironically we did, but you all can keep that a secret right, not that it matters). From that position, we have absolutely no say so in a single thing that company did or did not do. The actual investor (HIG in this case) does.

So yeah, while I think that electronics of every kind need to be removed from the voting process until the software that runs them is made public and vetted by experts or at least disclosed like slot machine software, I don't think there's any widespread abuse of the system's vulnerabilities. Yet.

I agree, there should be some sort of paper backup to all voting. It's complicated with the software because they are private companies writing it, FOR PROFIT. There have been anicdotle stories of voting machines voting the opposite of what the voter entered. So it's not implausible to think it couldn't happen. Although in this day in age, the amount of scrutiny on everything and all the polling, something really out of whack I would hope would be noticed. But you never know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

[nathanm]

Give one example of a shady thing from the Romney campaign about Obama.

Is there a particular reason you're drawing a false equivalence between things that "liberals" say and things that the Obama campaign says? I'll ask again, do you attribute the crap posted on Redstate to the Romney campaign? If not, why do you think this should be attributed to the Obama campaign?

I agree, there should be some sort of paper backup to all voting. It's complicated with the software because they are private companies writing it, FOR PROFIT.

Private companies write the software for slot machines, yet the Nevada Gaming Commission requires that it be disclosed to them and vetted before being put into use. There isn't anything complicated about making them release the code publicly. We just have to put that language in the bid. Public disclosure does not invalidate their copyright on the software and there aren't any novel algorithms in accepting and tallying votes. (And if there were, they could be patented)

[Conan71]

Give one example of a shady thing from the Romney campaign about Obama.

HIG has over $8.5 Billion (with a B) under management in many, many different funds. I can't say for certain, but I highly doubt that Solamere is an investor in every single one. In fairness, it would be impossible to know as it is private, but highly unlikely considering Solamere only has $129 Million under management. Too little amount to commit to one fund manager like HIG. Gotta stay diversified.

And even if they did have an interest in the fund that invested in Hart, the amount of influence that would have would be 0% as an investor. For example, at the fund of funds I worked at, we would have an interest (minuscule) in say Solyndra (ironically we did, but you all can keep that a secret right, not that it matters). From that position, we have absolutely no say so in a single thing that company did or did not do. The actual investor (HIG in this case) does.

I agree, there should be some sort of paper backup to all voting. It's complicated with the software because they are private companies writing it, FOR PROFIT. There have been anicdotle stories of voting machines voting the opposite of what the voter entered. So it's not implausible to think it couldn't happen. Although in this day in age, the amount of scrutiny on everything and all the polling, something really out of whack I would hope would be noticed. But you never know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Don't bother.  I'm convinced with the vigor Nate defends this president, I'm pretty sure they have a biological connection.  Aside from that, it's never beyond him to spew a total line of BS with a graph attached hoping no one will realize how deep that line of BS was.

[nathanm]

I'm pretty sure they have a biological connection. 

Yeah, he's my first cousin once removed. It makes me want to punch you guys when you call him a liar.

[Hoss]

Yeah, he's my first cousin once removed. It makes me want to punch you guys when you call him a liar.

Now, now Tagg....

[RecycleMichael]

Thought this story was a little too good to be true.  

One of these days something will stick.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tagg-romney-not-investor-voting-machine-company_657183.html

Romney's son has an equity firm that partners with another investment firm to have in their words, "a significant investment" in a company that makes and distributes voting machines. 

But the voting machine company spokesperson says they are not "owners".

I guess if a spokesperson says it ain't true, it doesn't matter how much of Tagg Romney money is involved.

[erfalf]

Romney's son has an equity firm that partners with another investment firm to have in their words, "a significant investment" in a company that makes and distributes voting machines.  

But the voting machine company spokesperson says they are not "owners".

I guess if a spokesperson says it ain't true, it doesn't matter how much of Tagg Romney money is involved.

Believe who you want (surprise surprise), but it would be a pretty big risk for Hart employees to out and out lie about their ownership. It's not like there is no paper trail.

Heck I posted an article in your language and everything (Think Progress).  

[Conan71]

Yeah, he's my first cousin once removed. It makes me want to punch you guys when you call him a liar.

I'm glad you let your sense of humor see light of day every now and then