The Nebraska Problem

Let's follow the trail:
-->Senator Hagel -->McCarthy Group -->ES & S Voting Machines

or perhaps

-->Senator Hagel's $$$ and influence
-->McCarthy Group
-->ES & S Voting Machines
(That were then used to elect Senator Hagle.)

There's a pretty clear cut conflict of interest here.

Does anyone care? What can we even do? (Dammit!)

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html#Nebraska

ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy runs the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy is the Campaign Treasurer for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; The FEC designates Michael McCarthy as a Primary Campaign Committee for Candidate Chuck Hagel; and Chuck Hagel's financials list the McCarthy Group as an Asset, with his investment valued at $1-$5 million.

Four documents are shown below, with links so you can authenticate them yourself:

P. 1-2 Corporate registration papers for ES&S, as submitted to Arizona Secretary of State in 2001:

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Page 1
[Click to Authenticate]
(Scroll to "Scanned Annual Reports," click "2001")
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Page 2
[Click to Authenticate]
(Scroll to "Scanned Annual Reports," click "2001")

McCarthy is designated Primary Campaign Committee for a Candidate
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[Click to Authenticate]
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[Click to Authenticate]

* 5. The Nebraska Problem: Republican Senator Hagel was Chairman and CEO of American Information Systems (now called ES&S); And, Hagel was CEO and a partner in McCarthy & Company.(6)

According to his financial filings, Hagel's investments with the McCarthy Group are still between $1 million and $5 million. Hagel's largest single investment appears to be in the McCarthy Group, who owns a large chunk of ES&S, the firm responsible for counting Hagel's own votes.

Hagel investment in McCarthy Group
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[Click to Authenticate]

(Enter Hagel in search box, view section IIIB on financials)

Hagel came to Omaha from Washington D.C., where he worked with the first George Bush Administration. In news articles by the Omaha World-Herald, Hagel said he was coming to Omaha to become president and partner in the McCarthy Group and Chairman of American Information Systems.

In his congressional bio he is said to have come to Omaha "to prepare for running for office." The first thing he did was run American Information Systems, a vote-counting company. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign. He continues to disclose an investment of $1—5 million in the McCarthy Group, but he does not identify the underlying assets (ES&S). His disclosure documents omit any mention of American Information Systems at all.

* 6. John Gottschalk has been reported as a director for both the World-Herald Company Inc. (concentrating on the non-newspaper subsidiaries) and ES&S. He was also involved with Senator Hagel in the World USO, has relationships with James Baker; he is listed as a USO pal of George W. Bush.

* 7. The World-Herald Company, Inc. has a newspaper and, among all their other operations, a nationwide communications network with databases containing personal information on almost everyone in the USA, large direct mailing firms, phone message broadcasting, fax blasting, mass e-mailing, publicity, advertising, Internet services, printing, as well as elections services — and voter registration services(7). The World Companies have operations in Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Nebraska, California, Iowa and Arizona — and almost all of the companies listed above have nothing to do with newspapers. The concern here relates to access to these operations, which are sometimes used for political marketing, in combination with ES&S, which does voter registration services. It would be a conflict of interest for a voter registration program to have access these database and marketing capabilities IF political vested interests were involved. Because we don't have full disclosure — we don't know what percentage of stock the major World-Herald stockholders have, or which ones they are, and because we don't know if these companies are wholly owned subsidiaries or partnerships, it is hard to judge conflict of interest on this.