The Real Threat of Bain Electoral Fraud for Romney - updated

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12204-does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote#.UILFtLzLaW4.facebook

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But new research now shows that the association doesn't stop with mere friendship and business associations. Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney.

The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes.

Unlike other private equity firms, Solamere does not invest in companies directly. Instead, Solamere invests in other private equity funds, like H.I.G. Capital. Solamere calls them partners. These partners, like H.I.G., then invest in various enterprises, like Hart Intercivic, the nation's third-largest voting machine manufacturer.

As reported by Lee Fang of The Nation, Solamere was founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Papa Romney's campaign finance chair. Ann Romney and Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney are also invested. Mitt himself threw in $10 million "seed money" to get the fund going, and spoke personally to its first full investors conference. Solamere's public web presence has been reduced to a front page only, so a complete list of it's partners can not be found. But reportage by the New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire and the Nation have slowly given us a partial picture of which funds are being funded by Solamere. Some $232 million has been raised so far, according to SEC filings and industry publications.

In addition to Romney's finance chair Spencer Zwick, Solamere has also provided the campaign with its finance director, Richard Morley, and a western regional finance coordinator, Kaitlin O'Reilly. O'Reilly is listed as an executive assistant at Solamere, and also at SJZ LLC, which was founded by her boss Spencer Zwick. The SJZ LLC campaign finance consulting firm has billed Mitt's campaign over $2 million this election cycle as well as doing another $9,687,582 in billing to various Congressional Campaigns. The host of the private fundraiser at which Romney made his infamous "47%" speech was Marc J. Leder, co-CEO of Sun Capital, another "partner" of the Solamere fund.

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http://www.politicususa.com/real-threat-bain-electoral-fraud-romney-ohio.html

By: Rmuse October 17th, 2012

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In America, a secret ballot prevents voters from being intimidated and protects their political privacy, but it has its drawbacks as well as benefits. Voting is the greatest expression of a democracy, but tragically, one political party in America is going to great lengths to end to the democratic process in their drive to transform the government into a plutocracy. Republicans have spent the past two years bemoaning rampant voter fraud that investigations have proven does not exist (except among Republicans), and they utilized their corporate legislative arm, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to model and pass state legislation to prevent seniors, students, minorities, and the poor from participating in the democratic process.

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The news has been inundated with reports of voter suppression and intimidation tactics in states controlled by Republicans to deny Democratic-leaning groups their right to cast ballots. In several states, besides harsh voter ID laws, voters were purged to give Republican candidates an advantage in the general election, and Romney’s campaign was linked to a company that sought out and registered Romney supporters, and the same group is tied to destroying Democratic voter registration forms. In each of the cases, they attempted to suppress voting, but this week reports surfaced that large corporations were intimidating employees with threats of job losses if Romney failed to win the election in another attempt to influence the outcome prior to Election Day. However, there is a troubling development out of Ohio that could alter the results of the election after voting is finished and it is no surprise they are intricately linked to Willard Romney’s company, Bain Capital.

In this year’s election, much of the Ohio electorate will cast its ballots on machines owned by close cronies of the Republican presidential candidate Willard Romney. Electronic voting machines owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain business partners and set to count the votes in Cincinnati could decide the 2012 election. In Cincinnati and around the state, the e-voting machines are owned by Hart Intercivic that are infamous for mechanical failures, “glitches,” counting errors and other problems now completely identified with the way Republicans steal elections. Hart Intercivic was taken over last year by H.I.G. Capital, and prominent partners and directors on the H.I.G. board hail from Bain Company or Bain Capital that Romney is still associated with. What is more troubling is that H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney’s campaign, and two H.I.G. Directors, John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman, are major Romney fundraisers along with a former Bain and H.I.G. manager, Brian Shortsleeve.

The problem with electronic voting machines is that the software they use is proprietary to the manufacturer, and individual election boards may own the actual machines. In Ohio, it is nearly guaranteed there will be no vote count transparency on election night because the tally will be conducted by Hart Intercivic and controlled by Secretary of State John Husted and Governor Kasich, with no public recourse or accountability. Husted was in the news yesterday when the Supreme Court denied his suit to eliminate early voting in Ohio on the weekend prior to the election, but by controlling the vote count with Romney’s Bain business partners owning the machines, it may not matter what the real results are. In 2008 during federal testimony, Karl Rove operative, and now-deceased, Michael Connell made it perfectly clear that electronic vote-flipping is relatively cheap and a simple process; especially if Republican election officials own and programmed the machines prior to the election.

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These questionable ties to Bain, Romney, and Ohio’s Republican governor and secretary of state may not be an issue if they were an isolated case of election tampering. However, throughout the campaign there has been one after another instance of voter suppression and fraud unique to Republicans. In several states, a so-called Republican strategist and voter fraud activist, Nathan Sproul, and his company registered Republicans while destroying registration forms of Democrats, and in GOP-controlled states, ALEC-modeled voter ID laws targeting Democratic-leaning voters sailed through legislatures, and election officials were terminated if they contested voter purging efforts.

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