HAGEL'S ELECTRONIC THEFT OF A U.S. SENATE SEAT WAS A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR *'S THEFT OF THE PRESIDENCY

HAGEL'S ELECTRONIC THEFT OF A U.S. SENATE SEAT WAS A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR BUSH'S THEFT OF THE PRESIDENCY

I kind of like Chuck Hagel-- for a Republican, and for someone I've never met. (I think my friend "D"
shook hands with him at a Republican event in Omaha or Lincoln in a hotel where "D"-- not the Dallas Depeche Mode fan, another "D"-- was debauching and he is so proud that he hadn't washed his hands between the debauching and the hand-shake.)

I especially like that Hagel has been speaking out, far more strongly than any cowardly Democrat careerist pols in the Senate, about what a catastrophe Bush has turned Iraq into. BUT... that doesn't lessen the gravity of the still investigated charges about how Hagel and the voting machine company he partially owns were able to steal elections for him and, eventually, pioneer the technological destruction of American democracy leading up to Bush's theft of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, respectively in Florida and Ohio.

Dr. Dennis Loo from Cal Poly in Pomona recently published an article, "NO PAPER TRAIL LEFT BEHIND: THE THEFT OF THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION," which I want to summarize before getting to the specifics of the Hagel case. Dr. Loo starts out prosaically enough, with 16 propositions. According to Loo in order "to believe that George Bush won the November 2, 2004 presidential election, you must also believe all of the following extremely improbable or outright impossible things.

1) A big turnout and a highly energized and motivated electorate favored the GOP instead of the Democrats for the first time in history.

2) Even though first-time voters, lapsed voters (those who didn’t vote in 2000), and undecideds went for John Kerry by big margins, and Bush lost people who voted for him in the cliffhanger 2000 election, Bush still received a 3.5 million vote surplus nationally.

3) The fact that Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republicans’ votes that he got in 2000, receiving in 2004 more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties, merely shows Floridians’ enthusiasm for Bush. He managed to do this despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000 and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points.

more...

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2005/09/hagels-electronic-theft-of-us-senate.html

matter what--no need to cheat. 11 years in the Senate, no proof of anything, but everyone loves a conspiracy. Read this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1761184&mesg_id=1764040

disclose his ties to the voting machine company?

maybe he was afraid of this sort of accusation, or maybe it was oversight--he was slapped by the Ethics Committee, if I recall correctly, but I don't think they found anything worth investigating. Nebraskans never had a problem with any of this--it's OUTSIDERS who are obsessed with making a giant conspiracy out of it, for their own agendas.

that it's ok he cheated, because he would've won anyway? Or are you really saying that 83% (an absolutely UNBELIEVABLE #) of the folk voting actually voted for him?

REALLY? 83%???

I lived in Omaha for a few years. 83% isn't all that shocking.

what i'm getting at is that 83% is an unreal #. Have there been other Senate races with numbers so high? Excepting of course ones where the defeated was incarcerated or involved in some type of scandal...

Voting is done in "secret" and often when one proclaims vociferously their intent, they'll step in a booth and vote another way. Nobody's looking, remember?

The facts bear out the manipulation hypothesis. And if Hagel did "nothing" wrong, why was he slapped on the wrist by the ethics committee?

I actually think Hagel is ok, given the R behind his name. He is a lot less worse than some of the others....

We had a popular, war hero, Senator in red state vs. a gimpy Democrat that even the Democratic Party ignored. Also, in Nebraska, being a Democrat doesn't necessarily mean you're a liberal (see Senator Ben Nelson). They're mostly centrists. Hagel appealed to that demographic. And he was very popular with the GOP until he broke with the party on the war.

I sat through a two hour luncheon with Chuck Hagel, and he seemed to be one of the most straight shooters I've met. Hell, even DUers like the guy! If I had still lived in NE, I might have considered voting for him. I know Democrats that did.

I'm not saying he didn't do anything wrong, but a landslide victory is not a premise for a charge of election fraud. It may seem suspicious on the surface but that's about it.

I don't trust ES&S as far as I can spit. But laying their sins at his feet seem a little over-reaching.

You don't think that was relevant?



Chuck Hagel was CEO of the company until shortly before his election in November 1996 to the United States Senate from Nebraska.

1992 Hagel moved back to Nebraska to become president of the McCarthy Group, an investment banking firm.

ES&S (the election company) is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group Inc., which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Co., the publisher of Nebraska's largest newspaper.


And the Omaha World Herald knew that but never printed it.

Just doesn't pass the smell test.


www.wikipedia.com

as well -- which owned ES &S

SNIP

"One underlying issue is whether Hagel properly disclosed his financial ties to Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a company that makes nearly half the voting machines used in the United States, including all those used in his native Nebraska.

ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group Inc., which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Co., which publishes the state’s largest newspaper. The voting machine company makes sophisticated optical scan and touch-screen vote-counting devices that many states have begun buying in recent years.

An official at Nebraska’s Election Administration estimated that ES&S machines tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in Hagel’s 2002 and 1996 election races.

In 1996, ES&S operated as American Information Systems Inc. (AIS). The company became ES&S after merging with Business Records Corp. in 1997.

In a disclosure form filed in 1996, covering the previous year, Hagel, then a Senate candidate, did not report that he was still chairman of AIS for the first 10 weeks of the year, as he was required to do."

SNIP

"Michael R. McCarthy, chairman of the McCarthy Group Inc. and Hagel’s campaign treasurer, acknowledged that the holding company is not publicly traded or widely diversified (under the committee’s definition), but claimed that it is publicly available.

“Our company is a privately held company where the shares are available to the public,” said McCarthy. “Our shares trade each year. It’s not SEC registered but it’s available to the public by private exchange or private treaty.”

McCarthy said Hagel’s $1-5 million investment made him a “minor shareholder.”

Hagel’s ties to ES&S go beyond his financial stake. He served as its chairman when it was named AIS from the early ‘90s until March of 1995. He also was an investor in AIS Investors Inc. until the beginning of 1995, McCarthy said.

Hagel also served as president of McCarthy & Co, the financial advisory group, from July of 1992 until the beginning of 1996.

Campaign finance reports show that McCarthy has served as treasurer for Hagel for Nebraska and later Hagel for Senate from 1999 until as recently as December of 2002."



http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx (I just checked this link and it's not working right now, or maybe it's been yanked. The quotes came from an article from The Hill which I stored in my email archive on voting issues.

He was the CEO of the company. The election was held on the company's machinery. Maybe this was not "tight" enough to disclose. Certainly nothing suspicious in the failure to disclose, either.

Apparently, everyone doesn't love a conspiracy. Many prefer reassuring fables.

After all, Hagel and Nelson hate each other's guts--you'd think Nelson would have raised a stink. He was Governor of Nebraska after all, he probably had some interest in the election process in Nebraska. Again, provide proof of wrongdoing, and I'll be convinced. At the end of the day, you have your suspicions, and....that's it. Until then, it makes a nice "fable". Believe your fable, and I'll believe in proof.

And I don't care why Nelson didn't look into it, that certainly proves nothing.*

You're the believer. You believe there's nothing here, and this faith suffices for you to adopt a veneer of arrogance over know-nothingism.

I believe only that investigation precedes proof, that nothing is proven in this case.

I believe there was and is probable cause for an investigation - with Hagel's outrageous failure to disclose his position as CEO of the voting machine company as initial point of suspicion - an investigation that would actually look into these machines and their "proprietary" software (in quotes since the taxpayers paid for it, they have a right to see how their votes are tabulated) and determine a) the potentials for fraud and b) if possible, whether fraud was committed.

Do you oppose such an investigation? Fine, that probably proves something about your own credulousness.

(* If he had looked into it, the likes of you might have been among the first to ridicule, cry tin-foil, and claim he was damaging the Democratic Party's precious "credibility" - of which it ceded about 91 percent somewhere around the vote on the PATRIOT Act and the Iraq war resolution, but never mind.)

What arrogance have I shown? This would be a huge crime against democracy, if true, and if he had anything to do with rigging, I'd like to see his ass in jail, or at the very least publicly shamed and forced to resign immediately. I just think it's wrong to state something as fact (a stolen election) that hasn't been proven--innoncent until proven guilty, remember that? However, there aren't any investigations being done, or planned--in fact, I think the Ethics Committee basically laid this to rest. THEY are the people you should call/write, and DEMAND an investigation, if you believe a possible crime was committed--there are D's on the committee, I'm sure they would be fair. I'm only making logical arguments as to why no one raised a stink about Hagel winning in Nebraska. You have to look at the whole picture, and not just jump to conclusions because of his connections to a company.

Here's more:

-snip-

The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's 'Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election.' According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel 'was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska.'

-snip-

His second race was a lock from the git-go. Why does this amaze people? He's a conservative Repub in a state that is gung-ho red, despite its Dem-Senator habit. The guy was/is considered at least somewhat to be Presidential material--he obviously impressed Nebraskans. He didn't have to cheat, and there's simply no evidence he did, at the end of the day. He's retiring--why beat this dead horse?

And now, as promised, the dope on Hagel. Hartmann draws on research from The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx) to confirm that former conservative radio talk-show host, Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska. "Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's 'Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election.' According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel 'was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska.'

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

'This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was,' said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm). 'They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me.' Is Matulka the sore loser the Hagel campaign paints him as, or is he democracy's proverbial canary in the mineshaft?

from:

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2005/09/hagels-electronic-theft-of-us-senate.html

Chuck was the better candidate? A DUer here reported working for the Nelson campaign, and ended up voting for Hagel--what does that tell you? Matulka thinks his loss to Hagel was "bigger than Watergate"--uh, OK. He apparently doesn't believe that an extremely popular Republican incumbent (in 2002, Iraq was obviously not a factor), with high approval ratings and potential as a Prez/VP candidate, could have possibly beaten him without rigging the election--THAT is called being delusional.

I am not questioning that the black box machines have been used to rig elections. What I do argue is that if the votes were rigged for Hagel, it was a safe, dry run and did not affect the outcome of his elections.

Ooookay. :eyes:

Here's the thing. You really need to come and live the Nebraska experience. It'll probably make where ever you are from feel like a Liberal Garden of Eden.

I don't deny that the ES&S machines are crap. Or that Hagel should have come clean about his connections to it. But he didn't need fixed machines to win. He ran a better campaign against marginal and crappy opponents in a very red state.

link please. I'll accept exit polls vs official results.

Bill

It's good form, if one knows for a fact that the assertion they're making IS true, that they then provide some back up for that assertion, if requested.

Otherwise they can always admit to talking outta their ass. :hi:

I'm talking out of my ass.

I only mentioned that as a possible alternative to actually coughing up a source.

:hi:

questions aboput Hagel's elections.

1) As many others have mentioned, his first election was a big upset where he received vote majorities in predominately Black precincts that had never voted Republican before. How do you explain this?

2) If Nelson is so unpopular in NE, how did he get elected to the Senate shortly after?

3) Why didn't Hagel disclose his relationship with ES&S as required by law?

And finally, say what you will about Matulski, but when he requested to have some of the paper ballots counted to compare the results to the ES&S opscan voting machines, he was told that state law in NE prohibits this. What a great way for citizens to have confidence in the election outcomes.

So yes you are right, there is no proof but state law in Nebraska prohibits a candidate from verifying the accuracy of the voting machines from the company that his opponent ran. It's not surprising that people question these type of elections. To simply call Matulski a sore loser is a lame tactic used recently by Republicans to brand anyone who would question recent questionable elections.

What better opportunity could there be for a test election theft, than one where no one would look too closely at the results because they were "expected" and could be easily explained away?

nt

site - Down With Tyranny - carries the Sinclair Lewis sentence that should take equal precedence with the Eisenhower sentence - to keep in our heads ,to share, and to do things - you sure do - thank you for all your finds and contributions.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis


(repeating: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2005/09/hagels-electronic-theft-of-us-senate.html )

was beyond belief, however we must be on alert for 2008. The mid-term "victory" that won very narrow majority's in the house and Senate of compliant Democrats was a deflection ie Bush was going into his "lams duck" faze, most of what he was put in power to do was done and he will and has simply given the legislative branch the finger when ever he disagrees. This could well be setting the stage for a 2008 theft because then they will point to 2006 when claiming innocence.

I've heard Thom Hartmann talk about his suspicions of Hagel's victories in Nebraska, but I doubt that it is widely known.

he was Poppy Bush's protege. Hartmann makes shit up.

not stating a fact. I believe that was pretty clear to his audience. Although like all political commentators he offers opinions, I generally find him to be pretty straight in his reporting of facts.

and we're damn lucky he's on OUR side! Have you ever read the man's Bio? It's quite impressive.


Thom Hartmann - Biography

Short Form Biography | Long Form Biography
Thom Hartmann Thom Hartmann is an award-winning, bestselling author, international lecturer, teacher, radio talk show host, and psychotherapist.

He's the creator of the "Hunter in a Farmer's World" metaphor to describe the experience of children and adults with ADHD, and the first to propose that ADHD is a neurological difference which may have adaptive value.

His books have been written about in Time magazine, he’s been on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, and been a guest on numerous radio and TV Shows, including NPR’s All Things Considered, CNN and BBC.
His book The Prophet’s Way led to an invitation to a private audience with Pope John Paul II in 1998.

His book "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" led to a September, 1999 invitation to spend a week with His Holiness The Dalai Lama at his home in Dharamsala, India.

A former journalist, editor and executive director of a residential treatment facility for severely disturbed and abused children, he lives in Vermont with his wife Louise.

Long Form Biography | Short Form Biography
Thom, Kereith and Louise Thom Hartmann’s books have been written about in Time magazine and he has been on numerous national and international radio and TV shows, including NPR’s All Things Considered, CNN, and BBC radio.

He has been on the front page of The Wall Street Journal twice, has spoken to over 100,000 people on four continents over the past two decades, and one of his books was selected for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian.

A best-selling and award-winning author, he is also rostered with the State of Vermont as a psychotherapist, and a licensed and certified NLP Practitioner and NLP Trainer.Over the past twenty years, he has worked with hundreds of ADD and hyperactive children and adults. In 1978, he and his wife Louise opened the New England Salem Children's Village (NESCV), a residential treatment facility for children on one hundred and thirty-two wooded acres on Stinson Lake in New Hampshire. The Children's Village is based on the family model of the international Salem program located in Germany.

NESCV specializes in providing previously institutionalized children with a family model, non-institutional setting, and works, usually, without drugs with children who have nearly all been in some form of drug therapy. It was the subject of three major reports on National Public Radio's All Things Considered afternoon news program, as well as feature articles in Parenting, Prevention, East-West, Country Journal, and over a dozen other national publications and newspapers. In 1998, NESCV opened The Hunter School, a residential school for ADD/ADHD children.

Hartmann also worked with the international Salem program based in Europe to set up famine relief and other, similar programs in Africa, Europe, South America, and Asia, and lived with his family for a year in Germany at the international Salem headquarters. In Uganda, in 1980 (just months after Idi Amin was run out of the country), he entered a war zone and negotiated with the provisional government for land to build a hospital and refugee center, which is still operating and seeing an average of over five hundred patients a day. He has helped set up similar programs in several other countries, most recently traveling to Bogota, Colombia.

In the media, Hartmann was a DJ and Program Director for several years, spent seven years as a radio and television news reporter during and immediately after his college years, and has been published over two hundred times in more than fifty different national and international publications, ranging from the German version of International Business Week and The Christian Science Monitor, to Popular Computing, for which he wrote a monthly column for two years. At one time he was Contributing Editor to, and a columnist for, seven different national magazines, and is the winner of the prestigious Jessie H. Neal award for excellence in reporting. His monograph about dietary intervention in the hyperactive syndrome was published in 1981 in The Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, and one of his short stories won a national award. One of his books (Think Fast!) was selected for inclusion in the permanent exhibit on information technology in medicine at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

Additionally, Hartmann has successfully started seven businesses, one of which made the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Enterprises he has started (and, with two exceptions, later sold) include an advertising agency, a newsletter/magazine publishing company, an herbal tea manufacturing company, an international travel wholesaler and travel agency, a training company presenting seminars nationwide, an electronics design and repair company, and a company which sells computer peripherals. He has published nine nonfiction books and written nine novels, is both a licensed pilot and a licensed private detective (neither of which he practices), and a former skydiver.

The founder of the Michigan Healing Arts Center, and a student of "alternative" medicine, he received a C.H. (Chartered Herbalist) degree from Dominion Herbal College, an M.H. (Master of Herbology) degree from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. in Homeopathic Medicine from Brantridge in England (his Ph.D. thesis was published in a national-circulation magazine in the United States, and these degrees qualify him to practice homeopathic and herbal medicine in England, Canada, India, and several dozen other countries). He completed a residential post-graduate course in acupuncture at the Beijing International Acupuncture Institute, the world's largest accredited acupuncture teaching hospital, in Beijing, China, in 1986. He is also a certified and licensed NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practicioner and Trainer, and rostered as a Psychotherapist by the State of Vermont.

A student of technology, he held a radio and TV station broadcast engineering license from the federal government, is a former amateur radio operator, a Certified Electronics Technician, and a former engineer/technician for RCA. He currently holds contracts with CompuServe to supervise and operate the Desktop Publishing Forum, ADD Forum, International Trade Forum, New Age Forums, Mind/Body Science Forum, and half a dozen others. In this capacity, he daily helps serve the needs of CompuServe's millions of members, and can easily be reached online at "thom at (fill in the @ sign) thomhartmann.com". His books about ADD, business, and spirituality are available in bookstores nationwide.

In the marketing and advertising field (his specialty), he is currently president of Mythical Books, sold in 1997 an advertising agency and newsletter publishing company, has worked as a consultant to dozens of US Government agencies and hundreds of companies, and has taught seminars on advertising and marketing to over ten thousand companies and individuals in the past fifteen years. His clients include over four hundred seventy of the Fortune 500 firms, and he has been a keynote speaker to groups ranging from a Hong Kong banker's meeting, to a symposium on international travel sponsored by KLM Airlines and American Express in Amsterdam, to the California Teachers Association's annual conference. He has spoken to over 100,000 people on five continents.

Born in 1951, he is the father of three adult children, and has been married to his wife, Louise, for more than thirty years.

this is bullshit. The title of this post asserts vote theft on absolutely no basis or proof. I'll defend the guy, because no one in Nebraska (that I've heard) thinks it's true. Nebraskans saw the campaigns and elections up close--they would be the people to raise concerns, if anyone. Instead, the election-fraud conspiracy theorists have latched onto this like a dog with a bone and continue to push this crap all over the internets. Since he's my Senator, and I think he does a pretty good job representing Nebraska, I'll give my opinion.

we probably wouldn't even be discussing this, for we are all good Germans.

money and no support from the Democratic party. Hagel was an incumbent in a Republican year. A record win is not out of the question. In 1996 polls were showing Hagel gaining strenght in the last few weeks and backlash agains Nelson's ads pushed his final numbers up. But conspiracy theories are always more fun than facts.

Second election was against then-governor Ben Nelson.

Hagel stole the first election and then stole votes to pad his reelection.

Polling from 1996 showed a trend towards Hagel and away from Nelson as the race went on. Hagel had a compelling story which helped along with mistakes by Nelson and the fact he was running mid-term as governor. His polling in the 40s near the end when he had won reelection with 70% was a sign of his trouble. People seem to forget Democrats getting elected to the Senate from Nebraska has been the exception and not the rule and only a handful have succeeded.

Although Nebraska has voted Republican for the last 75 years in Presidential elections, Chuck Hagel was the first Republican Senator from Nebraska in 35 years. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that Hagel did not need to steal either election, although I won't rule out vote padding.

(I'm gonna be a little nit-picky)so when Hagel took office in 97 it had been 20 years since an elected Republican had been in a NE Senate Seat or 24 years since one had been elected (Karnes was an appointed Republican from 87-88). Jim Exon had been the ONLY Democrat to hold that Senate seat before Hagel.

Dems got lucky in the 70s, Exon as Gov then Senate then Zorinsky (a Republican who became a Democrat so he could run for the Senate seat). Both would be lambasted as DINOs now. NE is a conservative state and any Democrat incumbent or not starts out with a disadvantage.

He was the first Republican in 24 YEARS to win a Senate seat in Nebraska and he just happened to own part interest in the company that owns the evoting machines? He didn't win.

<snip>
You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts.

You'd be wrong.

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx) has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

"This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm). "They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me."<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm

... Suckers.

For those who care about how a Senator ACTUALLY VOTES, you're welcome to take a gander:

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Chuck_Hagel.htm

Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 87% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 50% by CURE, indicating mixed votes on rehabilitation. (Dec 2000)
Rated 36% by the NEA, indicating a mixed record on public education. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 92% by CATO, indicating a pro-free trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 12% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 8% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
90% conservative voting record; 95% support of Pres. Bush. (Dec 2006)
Rated 22% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)


But hey - as long as you like the way he SOUNDS - that's really all that's important to a good American, isn't it?

... Then in the first instance, my remarks go to the DownWithTyranny person, and if the OP was quoting them approvingly, then secondarily to the OP.

Thanks for clarifying!

you figured out how to read articles by now? Bye.

There is nothing suspect in the slightest about Hagel's win in 2002, including the overwhelming margin of victory.

A week before the election, independent polling was showing Hagel with 80+ percent of the vote and Matulka with 10%. The fact that he got 14 percent of the vote is surprising, not because it was so low, but that it was that high.

Check out Matulka on opensecrets.org - they don't have any reported information about his spending during the campaign -- he was never a serious candidate.

As for the claims that Hagel won in black communities that had never before voted repub, I'd like to see some support. I haven't seen a demographic breakdown of the vote, but I do know this: Nebraska is a very white state. Census data show less than 5 percent of the inhabitants are African American. Of the 76,000 or so African American residents in the state, over 50,000 live in the city of Omaha, which is 13.31 percent African American. Omaha is in Douglas County, and Matulka got over 18 percent of the vote there (his best showing). In fact, Douglas County gave Matulka around 1/3 of his total votes. So, it seems likely that he did pretty well in the African American parts of the state.

Sorry, but Matulka is an idiot.

the state of Nebraska bans the counting of paper ballots to verify the accuracy of the voting machines used. No one on this thread is asserting that Malulska should have won.

Nelson was the one who allegedly lost the Black precints in a close race. I'll see if I can find some documentation to back this up.

The provision in Nebraska's statutes describing the procedure for recounting ballots was adopted in 2002, from what I can tell.

Nelson did not contest his race but when Matulka asked to count the paper ballots he was unable to because of state law.

What possible reason could there be for this law? If no one is allowed to count the paper ballots to verify optical scanners, you might as well have paperless DREs. And anyone who thinks that is a good voting system is out of their minds.

Hagel just announce he's not running again, so no rematch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091000789.html?hpid=topnews

--MAB

but the fact that the republicans are in power because of the electronic voting controlled by the very same republicans, is pertinent.

Unless of course you feel they won elections fair and square?

And that's what's up for discussion. "Hindsight" is always assumed to be "20/20", but that's assuming 'the facts' are all well-known, incontrovertible, and beyond dispute.

The Hagel election victories are open for discussion not, precisely, to re-construct what the majority of Nebraska voters may or may not have been thinking as they pulled the lever, or punched the chad, or entered a preference on the touchscreen.

What's up for discussion -- if you consider the Max Cleland/Fritz Mondale elections cited in the 'downwithtyranny' article -- are the accuracy/integrity of the voting process. Which may not have that much to do with how red Nebraska is, or what people were thinking about the candidates.