(big snap to the St. Pete Times for covering this! -- BROOK )
Exactly who is running the new voting machines?Florida's counties are not required to ask.
Florida knows more about the clerk who sells lottery tickets at the corner store than it does about the technician who troubleshoots voting machines at the corner precinct. That's because lottery ticket retailers must undergo criminal background checks, but there are no such state requirements for the employees of the companies that manufacture and maintain voting equipment for Florida's 67 counties.
A Florida felon can't vote, but he or she can own, sell, program and fix the machines that nonfelons use to vote - unless counties prohibit that in their individual contracts.
That, and the worrisome possibility of vote tampering, has voting watchdog groups asking who, exactly, is behind the companies that make Florida elections equipment. "We've been concerned about this for a long time," said Pamela Haengel, head of the Voting Integrity Alliance of Tampa Bay.
Haengel's interest mirrors that of the federal government, which is looking into reports of a possible connection between a Boca Raton company, Smartmatic, and Hugo Chavez, the fiery Venezuelan leader who recently called President Bush "the devil." Smartmatic, whose chief principals are Venezuelan entrepreneurs, last year purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, which makes the equipment used in Pinellas and Hillsborough elections.
Sequoia officials have vehemently denied any connection with the Venezuelan government. They say they are voluntarily providing information to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which oversees foreign companies operating in the United States, in order to put the rumors to rest. The possible link between Smartmatic and Chavez was reported over the weekend in the Miami Herald and the New York Times. Pinellas and Hillsborough County
elections officials say there's no reason to be concerned about the ownership of their election equipment vendors.But watchdog groups like Haengel's say there should be more information about the companies that make and maintain Florida's equipment, and about the proprietary software that is used, particularly in the 15 counties that use electronic voting machines. Their concern isn't limited to Sequoia. Of the three companies certified to do business in Florida only one is publicly traded - Diebold Elections Systems, based in North Canton, Ohio. The other two - Sequoia of Oakland, Calif., and Elections Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb. - are privately held, so less information on them is available.
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OTHER TIDBITS:
-- Diebold has contracts with 30 Florida counties;
-- Sequoia has contracts with five counties;
-- ES&S, which had employed former Florida Secretary of State Sandy Mortham as one of its lobbyists - has contracts with 32 for regular precinct coverage,
-- Some companies have additional contracts to handle absentee ballots or disabled accessible machines.
AND, MY PERSONAL FAVE...
State Sen. Nan Rich, the
vice chairwoman of the Ethics and Elections Committee, said
she would be more concerned about the background of the companies that sell voting machines if the individual counties didn't do a good job of vetting them through the contracts.(this last bit might have been an occasion for my FIRST USE of the ROFL emo if it weren't so F'n evil).
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