U.S. panel probes voting machine firm

[Rose Siding]

A federal panel is looking at a South Florida firm that owns an electronic voting machines provider after concerns surfaced that it could be a tool of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The company denied the allegation.

A U.S. Treasury-led panel that investigates whether U.S. companies with ties to foreign investors compromise national security has contacted the Boca Raton parent company of a voting machine supplier whose top executives once had links to the Venezuelan government.

The company, Smartmatic, last year acquired Sequoia Voting Systems, a well-known supplier of electronic voting equipment in 16 states. Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties are among those that use Sequoia's electronic voting machines. Smartmatic was a partner in a consortium that supplied electronic voting machines used in the controversial referendum President Hugo Chávez won in 2004.
.....
Maloney, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology, which has jurisdiction over CFIUS, said in her letter to Treasury that she wanted to ensure the Smartmatic deal had received federal scrutiny.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15045146.htm

[tanyev]

1. That's crazy. The voting machines are perfectly safe.

Nobody would ever be able to manipulate them to swing an election in Chavez' favor.



:sarcasm:

[pnorman]

3. My recollection of that referendum was that

there WAS a paper audit trail from those electronic voting machines. Anyone here recall the details? And considering how wildly popular Chavez seems to be down there, it's hard to imagine why he'd even see any need to tamper with the vote.

But turning the spotlight on the ownership of ANY voting machine corporaton ... now that's ALWAYS a good idea.

pnorman
On edit: Here's what I was able to Google so far: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,64687,00.html

[annabanana]

2. HEY!. . . If Diebold & ES&S are "no problemo". . .

These should give no cause for alarm.

right?

[ellenfl]

4. oh, no! some of the voting machines won't switch dem

votes to repugs!? can't have that.

ellen fl

[Judi Lynn]

5. As DU'ers like "Peace Patriot" have tried to explain to people here before

Venezuela uses open source programming" and we DON'T:

Well, here's another contrast between us and democratic Venezuela: They have open source code in their electronic voting system, that is, the electronic voting system vendors are required to disclose the programming they use for tabulating votes, whereas, in the U.S., two companies with close ties to the Bush Cartel "count" all our votes with "trade secret," proprietary programming code--code so secret that not even our elected secretaries of state are permitted to review it.

How this happened was through a $4 billion appropriation by Bush's and Tom Delay's Congress to "reform" the election system, after the scandal of Florida 2000, which was used to entice the states to purchase "lemon" voting systems from Bush's buddies at Diebold and ES&S electronics companies (and a few others). These are extremely insecure, unreliable, shoddy and, above all, hackable electronic voting systems--with Bush's buddies insisting that the innards of their machines remain a "trade secret" and that their machines do not need a "paper trail" or any means of recounting or auditing the "results" that they produce, and furthermore requiring the states to sign on to permanent and highly expensive "servicing" contracts, whereby private company personnel, who are in the pay of major Bush and far rightwing funders, have continual easy access to the machines, and are the only ones who know how to keep the machines running.

Who would be so insane as to buy such voting systems? Republican election officials who don't believe in democracy, and Democratic election officials who are corrupt (i.e., are being lavishly lobbied*, are getting future job offers, etc.).

Our entire political system--and all of our political representatives--are now beholden to these election officials and to the choices that Diebold and ES&S make for our political system when they tweak their SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code inside their machines (easy as pie--one hacker, a couple of minutes).

This is why Venezuela has a president and a legislature that are representing the majority of Venezuelans--including the vast poor population which has never before been represented in government--while we have criminals, mass murderers, massive thieves and congenital liars ruling over US (and NOT representing us).
(snip/)

DU archived thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1785195#1785310

[Rose Siding]

6. Thanks

The ease with which the media could morph this story into "Chavez: the Real Threat to American democracy" is spooky.

[ladjf]

8. Good post. You have succinctly described the evoting situation.

[Oak2004]

7. Funny -- once I heard Sequoia had been bought by a Venezuela concern

I thought "Good! Now I don't have to worry about that company throwing the election to the Republicans".

After all Chavez has won more taint-free, internationally certified free and fair elections than Bush has.