Venezuela owns manufacture of electronic voting machines used

[fuzzyball]

in the upcoming United States congrssional elections in 17 states!
According to this article, U.S. Govt is investigating this.

http://www.decisionpoint.com/TAC/DUARTE.html

[robinlynne]

1. That is a lie. There are other threads about it this week. If you do a search you

can find the truth from as recently as today or yesterday.

[FogerRox]

2. Robin has it right.

Any Smartmatic ownership is by the ANti Chavez element in that country, which is funded by the Bush crime family.



The Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates exit poll shows 59% in favor of recalling Chavez (the "Si" or "Yes", anti-Chavez vote) and 41% against recalling Chavez (the "No", pro-Chavez vote).

This is a national exit poll conducted in 267 voting centers throughout the country. ……
In these centers, 20,382 voters were interviewed. …..
The margin of error for these final exit poll results referred to in this release is under +/-1%

Press release:

http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2004/08/exit-poll-results-show-major-defeat.html



Now it comes out that the poll, according to Associated Press, was not conducted by the firm’s own employees, as falsely stated by the firm’s press release, but, rather, by a partisan, U.S.-government funded, anti-Chávez, activist group, Súmate,


While the ABC link to the AP story is no longer working:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040819_91.html

Op-Ed: Election Monitors Work to Build Nations' Trust
By
Jimmy Carter
23 Aug 2004


An electronic voting and tabulation system was developed by a Venezuelan-American consortium led by SmartMatic that permitted touch-screen voting, with each choice backed up by a paper ballot that was examined by the voter and then placed in a sealed box. We international monitors assured that the machines were tested in advance, and we observed the voting throughout the nation.
At the end of the voting day, results from each of the 20,000 machines were certified by poll workers and party observers and transmitted on telephone lines (CANTV, Verizon and others) to election headquarters in Caracas.
All paper ballots were retained under military guard in the local regions. As predicted by several public opinion polls and also confirmed by our independent vote tabulation, Venezuelan citizens once again expressed support for Chavez, this time by a 59 percent to 41 percent margin. He will now serve the remaining 2 1/2 years of this term (and be eligible for re-election).

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc1810.html

SO the crooked exit polls said Chavez lost the August 15th referendum by 41% to 59% while the Voter Verfied paper ballots said Chavez won the referendum by 59% to 41%.

And I cannot get a decent source, but apparently ES&S touchscreens were used in Venezuela in 2000.

[FogerRox]

3. Delarue used to own Sequoia, they are controlled by the Carlyle group

who would not sell Sequoia to a foe of Bush SR, like Chavez.



InfoTrac Web: Custom Newspapers.

AL General
AT BOCA FIRM BUYS MAKER OF COUNTY VOTE MACHINES.(LOCAL)
AU George Bennett
CT The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, FL)
DP March 10, 2005 p2C
LW 2C
ND 20050312
OT (LOCAL)
PB The Palm Beach Post
PT Newspaper
RM COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
SN 1528-5758
XX 279
ZZ

Source: The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, FL), March 10, 2005
p2C.

Title: BOCA FIRM BUYS MAKER OF COUNTY VOTE MACHINES.(LOCAL)
Author: George Bennett

Electronic Collection: CJ130183885
RN: CJ130183885


Full Text COPYRIGHT 2005 The Palm Beach Post

Byline: GEORGE BENNETT, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The company that made Palm Beach County's touch-screen voting machines
has
been purchased by a Boca Raton firm that made the machines used in last
year's
disputed Venezuelan recall election.

Sequoia Voting Systems was acquired Wednesday by Smartmatic Corp.,
which has
its headquarters and about 15 employees in Arvida Park of Commerce.
Terms of
the deal weren't announced.

Sequoia was previously owned by U.K.-based De La Rue PLC.

Sequoia has sold about 4,400 touch screens to Palm Beach County over
the past
three years and prints the county's paper absentee and provisional
ballots. It
provides occasional technical assistance, most recently in November,
when two
Sequoia employees were in Palm Beach County for the presidential
election.

The change in ownership shouldn't make any short-term difference to
county
voters, officials from Sequoia and Smartmatic said.

Sequoia will continue its plans to seek state certification for a
printer that
produces verifiable paper ballots to accompany its paperless,
touch-screen
machines, Sequoia Vice President Alfie Charles said.

Over the long term, Smartmatic President Jack Blaine said, the deal
adds
research and development capability to Sequoia while giving Smartmatic
a
foothold in the U.S. elections market.

Smartmatic, which Blaine said has more than $100 million in annual
sales, has
sold electronic voting machines in Venezuela and other Latin American
countries.

After leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez kept his job in an
August
recall election, the opposition accused the Chavez regime of using the
Smartmatic machines to rig the outcome. Smartmatic vehemently disputed
the
claims and former President Jimmy Carter's international Carter Center
said it
believed the results were accurate.

- [e-mail]