@jennycohn1 @loonyberg Yes, the board is full of Reaganite and George Bush cronies. I think it’s safe to say that the entire organization’s purpose is pushing electronic voting, and especially EDS, and thereby subverting democracy around the world.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg The government funding you see from the State Department. The UN also funds it.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg Electronic voting actually originated with George W. Bush’s Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, with the US govt helping to fund ($3.9B to start) the development and implementation of electronic systems. And yes, Republicans have mostly pushed it.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg After 2000 election Florida “hanging chad” controversy, the first SOS to tamper with the vote with electronic balloting was Ohio’s J. Kenneth Blackwell, who is now on IFES’s Board. He is also on the Board of the NRA,
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg works for the notoriously theocratic and homophobic Family Research Council and Liberty U., writes for right-wing propaganda rag Townhall.com, works for the “American Civil Rights Union”
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg (the purpose of which it is voter suppression, opposing the ACLU, ‘originalism’, theocracy, supporting ‘gun rights’ (the Heller and McDonald decisions), opposing government regulation of anything, supporting gerrymandering, and recalling elected Democratic officials.)
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg Oh, he’s also on the board of the Koch organizations, Club for Growth and National Taxpayers Union.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg But a great key to IFES’ purpose is the chairman, William R Sweeney, a top DC lobbyist, who became VP for Global Government Affairs for Electronic Data Systems, resigning just before becoming the CEO at the IFES in 2009.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg What is EDS? Started by Ross Perot, and changing ownership many times since, it does lots of bank software, ATM software, defense department contracts, and projects around the world. I would say this is one of them.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg Because, among their endeavors in the last 20 years, one has been the election systems management software, integrating the information statewide for electronic voting machines. They don’t make the machines – that’s ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg – but EDS is a major investor in them, and uses the information to ‘tabulate’ the votes statewide. Now they can do it in foreign countries, paid for the UN and American taxpayers.
@jennycohn1 @loonyberg @threadreaderapp Unroll, please
