Hagel was Chairman, CEO of Voting Machine Manufacturer

At Astute Bloggers, Reliapundit asks:

 

DID HAGEL STEAL THE ELECTION FOR OBAMA,

AND IS HIS NOMINATION AS SECDEF PAYOFF?

 

Who knew?  Hagel was Chairman and CEO of American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), later known as Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a computerized voting machine manufacturer partly owned by McCarthy Group, LLC. That company's founder, Michael McCarthy, was Hagel's campaign treasurer.

And the follow-up question is...

Why else would Obama nominate a guy with no experience in the Pentagon, with no natural political constituency, who hasn't even got the confidence of our key allies?

 

Chicago politics... writ Very Very Large? 

Read it all HERE.

 

So I googled the company.

Upstart Business Journal, Nov. 6.2012: 

Suit filed for “experimental” software installed on Ohio voting machines

Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) ... allegedly installed software onto Ohio election machines that could potentially impact the outcome of the election in a very different way.

“What ES&S has chosen to do here is extremely dangerous and exactly what you'd want to do if you wanted to plant a “cheat” onto the central tabulator,” wrote Jim March, an election integrity expert in a court affidavit stating that he was willing to testify on the matter.

 

In its profile at YahooFinance, ES&S is described as "the largest voting machine company in the US," providing equipment in some 45 US states and four countries, as well as "maintenance and support services."

Hagel's win over Ben Nelson in the 1996 Nebraska senatorial race is still widely questioned on the Left, based on Hagel's connection to the voting machine manufacturer. See for example Harper's Magazine, Nov. 2012: "How to Rig an Election: The G.O.P aims to paint the country red."

... as the twentieth century came to a close, a brave new world of election rigging emerged, on a scale that might have prompted Huey Long’s stunned admiration. Tracing the sea changes in our electoral process, we see that two major events have paved the way for this lethal form of election manipulation: the mass adoption of computerized voting technology, and the outsourcing of our elections to a handful of corporations that operate in the shadows, with little oversight or accountability.

This privatization of our elections has occurred without public knowledge or consent, leading to one of the most dangerous and least understood crises in the history of American democracy. We have actually lost the ability to verify election results.

 

The Left was (and still is) angry about the possibility that George Bush was frauduelently elected, and the Right is worried about it now that Obama has been re-elected. You'd think, since both sides care so much about the integrity of our elections, that we could transcend partisanship - at least on this one issue - but no such luck.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Gibbon said -- in the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" -- that "corruption is the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty." If he was right (and he probably was; liberal democracies do breed huge amounts of corruption) then, as cynical as it may sound, escapades like the one Hagel may have been guilty of are the price we pay for being free people in a democratic country. I'm convinced, though, that -- with or without any hanky-panky -- Hagel would have gotten the nomination because he so perfectly reflects Obama's views on the Middle East. Those of us who years ago spotted Obama for a liar have known for a long time that his pledges to "make sure" Iran never gets a nuclear bomb were nothing more than political hokum. He's always intended for Iran to get its bomb and, now that he's in his second term, he can proceed with impunity. Having a pliable Hagel in the Cabinet will only make things easier. The American people have been snookered again. The problem here isn't corruption; the problem here is a gullible, under-educated, and misinformed electorate.