Soros-connected Vote-counting Firm Expands in U.S.

The New American – by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

A Spanish vote-tabulation firm with ties to billionaire globalist George Soros is purchasing software to give it greater power over the voting in U.S. elections.

In a press release under a Barcelona and Tampa, Florida dateline, Scytl announced:

Scytl’s end-to-end election modernization solution covers the full election cycle (Pre-election, Election Day and Post-election), providing electoral bodies the most secure, transparent, auditable and accessible solution in the marketplace and allows Scytl to offer personalized election modernization roadmaps to their customers combining both traditional and online voting solutions as needed.  

In order to consolidate such beginning-to-end control, Scytl has purchased software from a trio of organizations within the gravitational pull of planet Soros.

Again, from the press release:

Scytl, the worldwide leader in secure online voting and election modernization, continues receiving electoral and industry expert recognition for its end-to-end election modernization technology and electoral roadmap implementation approach from organizations such as IDC, Ovum and ACEEEO.

Regarding the benefit of its cooperation with Ovum, Scytl writes:

“We believe Scytl’s wide variety of offerings, investment into certifications, and emphasis on security, auditing, and testing position the company as a dominant provider in election modernization,” says Nishant Shah, Research Analyst at Ovum and author of the On the Radar: Scytl report.

Shah’s biographical sketch on the Ovum website is worth reading in light of his influence on the machines that count votes in American elections.

Before joining Ovum, Nishant’s work spanned organizational strategy, project management, sustainability, and business development. This included facilitating large-scale public-private partnerships in international health for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and his Global Business Coalition….

That snippet contains several red flags. First, there is Shah’s facilitation of “large-scale public-private partnerships” or PPPs.

A PPP is often defined as “a contract between a public sector authority and a private party, in which the private party provides a public service or project and assumes substantial financial, technical and operational risk in the project.” As part of this scheme, a private company is given control over some public function typically provided by government. It is a tactic very much in vogue in internationalist circles and is considered an effective way to sneak the influence and the control of the UN in the back door.

Regardless of the rhetoric, the true purpose of PPPs is to consolidate government and private corporations, giving them joint control over public entities. The result is the elimination of local sovereignty and the insidious replacement of county election commissions with a board of directors of a company whose mission statement calls for the creation of an executive governing body that is neither fish nor fowl, but is obliged to enforce international treaties and regulations written by the apparatchiks at the UN.

Given the UN’s role in promoting PPPs, it is likely that those administering these centralized partnerships will come from a coterie of managers accustomed to looking to the international body or federal agencies for guidance, if recent initiatives such as Agenda 21 are any example.

As envisioned by the UN and the internationalists in the U.S. government, PPPs will slyly seize control of elections, transferring authority for this vital expression of republican government from local and state boards to pseudo-private agencies made up of a mish-mash of federal agents and bureaucratic overseers adhering to global government regulations.

The second warning bell that sounds in the Shah biography is his affiliation with the GlobalBusiness Coalition.

George Soros is the “founding supporter” of Global Business Coalition.

There is yet another Shah-Soros connection.

Later in Shah’s Ovum bio, his work with the Acumen Fund in Pakistan is noted. Soros’s daughter, Andrea, serves on the board of this organization. She also sits on the board of her father’s Open Society Foundation.

Following the dotted lines connecting the Open Society Foundation to Scytl and on to Soros, is a bit of a challenge, but one worth accepting. In an article published on World Net Daily, Aaron Klein ably guides readers from strand to strand in this web of influence.

Scytl purchased the software division of Gov2U, described as a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting the use of technology in the fields of governance and democracy.

A Scytl press release said: “Gov2U created its software division in 2004 and, since then, it has developed a wide array of innovative award-winning eDemocracy solutions that have been implemented in multiple countries across Europe, Africa and America at the local, regional and federal government levels.”

The Spain-based company says the “main purpose of these tools is to engage citizens in participatory processes through the use of online and offline platforms, bringing more transparency and legitimacy to decision-making processes.”

Gov4U is currently partnered with Soros’ Open Society to support and develop a group called the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

The group runs a website, OpeningParliament.org, which says it is a forum “intended to help connect the world’s civic organizations engaged in monitoring, supporting and opening up their countries’ parliaments and legislative institutions.”

Gov4U, meanwhile, has eight partners of its own listed on its website, including the Soros-funded and partnered National Democratic Institute, or NDI.

Aside from receiving financial support for Soros, NDI has co-hosted scores of events along with Soros’ Open Society. The two groups work closely together.

NDI and the Open Society, for example, worked together to push for electoral and legislative reform in Romania.

NDI boasts that with Open Society Institute funds it conducted a political leadership training series for Romanian activists to “bring tangible improvements to their communities.”

NDI describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to establish and strengthen political and civic organizations, safeguard elections and promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.

NDI previously stated it was founded to draw on the traditions of the U.S. Democratic Party.

WND found that NDI is also listed as the only U.S.-associated organization of Socialists International, the world’s largest socialist umbrella group.

NDI was originally created by the federally funded National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, which itself founded joint NDI projects with the Open Society. Another NDI financial backer is the United States Agency for International Development, USAID.

It is disturbing to discover that not only is Scytl found in the Soros sphere, but it has demonstrable connections to international socialism, the U.S. Democratic Party, and the United Nations, as well.

Taken alone, these unsettling associations might make voters question their electoral board’s contracting with Scytl to administer elections in the United States. When viewed in context of the spread of Scytl’s support of vote counting, however, the picture takes on a darker aspect.

For example, the state of Florida was using Scytl to tabulate election results, but later rescinded the contract after uncovering evidence of significant risks in the methods the Barcelona-based company was employing.

According to the report issued by the Florida Department of State:

Our findings identified vulnerabilities that, in the worst case, could result in (i) voters being unable to cast votes, (ii) an election result that does not accurately reflect the will of the voters, or (iii) disclosure of confidential information, such as the votes cast by a voter.

Then in 2010, the Scytl system in use in Washington, D.C. was hacked. As part of an effort to determine the reliability of the devices, the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics reportedly “encouraged outside parties to hack and find flaws in its new online balloting system.” Answering the challenge, students from the University of Michigan successfully violated the site and programmed it to play the University of Michigan fight song every time a vote was cast.

Why should this alarm Americans who don’t live in those jurisdictions? Chiefly because during the midterm elections in November 2010, Scytl was contracted by 14 states to “modernize” their voting apparatuses.

Scytl is set to deploy its software in 900 U.S. jurisdictions. The firm already handles the balloting for members of the U.S. militaryand their families living overseas.

During that election cycle (midterm 2010) the following states used Scytl’s technology in tabulating votes: New York, Texas, Washington, California, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Furthermore, Voter Action, an election integrity advocacy group, filed a complaint with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in April 2010 alleging that the use of Scytl’s systems in the voting process “raises national security concerns.”

“Foreign governments may also seek to undermine the national security interests of the United States, either directly or through other organizations,” the complaint claimed.

In support of this last assertion, the complaint reveals that Scytl was formed in 2001 as the result of work done by a research group at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, work which was financed in large part by the Spanish government’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Such associations are certainly worth examining very closely before control of our elections is handed over to Scytl. Especially in light of Scytl’s practice of downloading the votes from each precinct where its devices are in use to a company-owned server where they will be stored. Once the votes are collected, counted, and collated by Scytl and saved on its own proprietary servers, it would be nearly impossible to track any discrepancies between the numbers it reports and the actually vote tallies as taken at the local polling places.

Finally, although it certainly doesn’t crow about its strong ties to George Soros and international socialism, Scytl boldly declares that its services “power 90% of binding elections….”

The list of its current “partners” is enough to give pause to citizens in these states and justify a demand that local election boards disclose how much control over the voting process they’ve surrendered to Scytl.

The following states are listed as current customers on the Scytl website:

Alaska

Arkansas

Kentucky

North Carolina

Arizona

Mississippi

Virginia

West Virginia

Florida

Alabama

New York

and the city of Washington, D.C.

 

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state.  He is the host of The New American Review radio show that is simulcast on YouTube every Monday. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com

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