About half of the largest ballot-counting corporation, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), is owned by the Omaha World-Herald Company, which publishes the city's conservative daily newspaper, and about a fourth is owned by the McCarthy Group, an Omaha investment fund that is identified with Republican causes.

John Gottschalk, publisher of the World-Herald, recruited Chuck Hagel into American Information Systems (AIS), an Omaha-based vote-counting company. Hagel worked there five years, eventually becoming CEO and part owner. In 1995 Hagel resigned to run for the Senate from Nebraska, where AIS would be counting the votes in his election contest. A Gallup/World-Herald poll the Sunday before the voting showed Hagel and his Democratic opponent in a 47-47 dead heat. Hagel won two days later by a fourteen-point spread. Easily re-elected in 2002, Hagel is a likely GOP candidate for President in 2008.

Hagel's investment in the McCarthy Group is valued in his reports to the Senate at between $1 million and $5 million. I asked him if a US senator should be an investor in, as well as close friends and allies with, the leading owners of the largest vote-counting company in the country, which counts his own contested elections and expects to count about 61 million votes in November. Hagel replied: "I have no direct investment in ES&S. I have no discretion over McCarthy Group investments. But more importantly, disclosure is the answer [to] these dilemmas and questions. The people of America can determine if members have serious conflicts of interest."

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