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VOTING MACHINE CONTROVERSY
By Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau
August 28, 2003

http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/106207171078040.xml

Columbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told
Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who
has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted
Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company
to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as
Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier
this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate
fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund -
partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper
Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell,
also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible
to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the
2004 election.

Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court challenge over
the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified bidder, Sequoia
Voting Systems.

In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider donating or
raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state GOP will
use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that legislative
Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.

They urged Blackwell to remove Diebold from the field of voting-machine
companies eligible to sell to Ohio counties.

This is the second such request in as many months. State Sen. Jeff Jacobson,
a Dayton-area Republican, asked Blackwell in July to disqualify Diebold
after security concerns arose over its equipment.

"Ordinary Ohioans may infer that Blackwell's office is looking past
Diebold's security issues because its CEO is seeking $10,000 donations for
Blackwell's party - donations that could be made with statewide elected
officials right there in the same room," said Senate Democratic Leader Greg
DiDonato.

Diebold spokeswoman Michelle Griggy said O'Dell - who was unavailable to
comment personally - has held fund-raisers in his home for many causes,
including the Columbus Zoo, Op era Columbus, Catholic Social Services and
Ohio State University.

Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk said the party approached O'Dell about hosting
the event at his home, the historic Cotswold Manor, and not the other way
around. Mauk said that under federal campaign finance rules, the party
cannot use any money from its federal account for state-level candidates.

"To think that Diebold is somehow tainted because they have a couple folks
on their board who support the president is just unfair," Mauk said.

Griggy said in an e-mail statement that Diebold could not comment on the
political contributions of individual company employees.

Blackwell said Diebold is not the only company with political connections -
noting that lobbyists for voting-machine makers read like a who's who of
Columbus' powerful and politically connected.

"Let me put it to you this way: If there was one person uniquely involved in
the political process, that might be troubling," he said. "But there's no
one that hasn't used every legitimate avenue and bit of leverage that they
could legally use to get their product looked at. Believe me, if there is a
political lever to be pulled, all of them have pulled it."

Blackwell said he stands by the process used for selecting voting machine
vendors as fair, thorough and impartial.

As of yesterday, however, that determination lay with Ohio Court of Claims
Judge Fred Shoemaker.

He heard closing arguments yesterday over whether Sequoia was unfairly
eliminated by Blackwell midway through the final phase of negotiations.

Shoemaker extended a temporary restraining order in the case for 14 days,
but said he hopes to issue his opinion sooner than that.

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VOTING INDUSTRY INSIDERS HOLD SECRET MEETING TO
HIRE PR FIRM TO SELL ELECTRONIC VOTING TO PUBLIC
By Bev Harris
Black Box Voting

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/082603Harris/082603harris.html

"I just don't like to put it in writing because if this thing winds up in
the press somewhere, inadvertently, I don't want the story saying the
e-voting industry is in trouble and decided to hire a lobbying firm to take
care of their problem for them." ­ ITAA professional lobbyist Harris Miller
talking to voting machine manufacturers in a conference call, Friday, 22
August 2003

...........

August 26, 2003‹It is time to see if we still have a free press with a
pulse. Please read the following very carefully:

On Friday, Aug. 22, a meeting was held. David Allen, publisher of Black Box
Voting , attended this meeting, which was a private teleconference among
voting industry insiders that was supposed to be secret. He obtained a
transcript and a document.

Participants were R. Doug Lewis who heads The Election Center, Diebold
Election Systems, ES&S, Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart Intercivic, a few more
voting machine companies, and the ES division of ITAA.

Read Carefully: In this meeting‹

1) The purpose of the meeting was to get the voting vendors to pony up
$200,000 by Friday for a massive PR campaign for the voting machine
coalition. The money is to go to the ES division of the ITAA. Independent
investigation of Diebold system for Maryland, Ohio, is the SAIC.   SAIC
Senior Vice president: Ronald Knecht.   Director of ES division of the ITAA:
It is Ronald Knecht   Firm that wrote the proposal for PR whitewash: ES
division of ITAA.   Money to be paid by Friday; those who don't pay don't
get protection. Said in a nicer way, of course.

2) Participants asked if a task force composed of defense contractors and
defense procurement contractors could help them "again" like they did with
HAVA. They mentioned Lockheed (weapons contractor) and Northrop Grumman
(defense contractor) and Accenture (defense procurement contractor). They
discussed that these companies were the driving force behind the HAVA bill,
which requires purchase of new electronic voting systems and also purchase
of new, statewide, electronic voter registration.

The vendors who have advertised the new voter registration system are:
Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and Election.com which is owned by Accenture. The
vendors for voting machines are: Northrop Grumman (through an alliance);
Diebold (ties to Bush administration); Diversified Dynamics (a weapons
manufacturer; its machines created by SAIC); General Dynamics (defense
contractor); ES&S; Hart Intercivic (alliance with Accenture); Sequoia, and
VoteHere which is seeking to provide a new "vote verification" software
which will go into every machine made by every vendor. SAIC Vice Chairman:
Admiral Bill Owens, a member of the Defense Policy Board.   Chairman of the
VoteHere board of directors: Admiral Bill Owens.   Director of VoteHere:
former CIA director, head of the George Bush School of Business, Robert
Gates.

VoteHere: No visible stream of revenue. Very minimal sales history. I have
not been able to find any record of venture capital deals. What is the
source of funding for this company?

3) There was a significant amount of discussion about collusion and
antitrust and "of course you know I really shouldn't be here" and so forth.

While it is normal for an industry to meet to set up a lobbying coalition,
here is what is quite abnormal: The Election Center, the organization who
oversees certification of the voting machines, and coordinates activities of
the secretaries of state and the state election directors, was for some
reason setting up this lobbying meeting for vendors to launch a massive PR
campaign -- not to correct the problems with the machines, mind you, but to
correct the public perception.   The 5-day deadline to pay $200,000 (and, as
one vendor said, without even specifying the deliverables!). Normal way
would be to meet as an industry, decide what you want in a lobbying firm,
interview a few and select. In this case, the ITAA met privately with R.
Doug Lewis of The Election Center, then hastily called a teleconference and
said "pay us by Friday."

The ITAA then promised to come up with antitrust guidelines, at first almost
for free, then for a token sum, a couple thousand dollars.

4) They all agreed the meeting should never get into the media.

5) There was discussion of how to gain influence over the FEC certification
process, or more accurately, try to preempt it and devalue it with their
own. They are planning to come up with their own "gold standard."

(Will the "gold standard" be the new VoteHere "verification system" which
uses cryptography instead of a voter-verified paper ballot? This way, there
will be no evidence except for bits and bytes. Watch the SAIC report on
Diebold very carefully: if it identifies flaws and suggests correcting them
with some sort of cryptography, especially if this includes a cryptographic
solution for vote verification, what they are doing is back-dooring the
VoteHere product in. Here you go: Get the VoteHere cryptography solution
signed off on by various defense contractors and homeland security agencies
and then call it the new "gold standard.")

If this happens there will never again be an evidence trail of the vote, in
the USA or in many other countries, because they are putting these machines
into England, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and
Asia.

6) A very interesting part of this was the discussion of fees. Here's what
is so unusual about that: The fee proposed is in no way commensurate with
the "deliverables" the ITAA outlines. There must be funding from another
source, flying under the radar, on this.

They are promising a massive PR and media campaign, polling, market surveys,
a full congressional lobbying effort, approaching and rolling academics and
key organizations over to their side, setting up a panel of academics to
refute anything troublesome -- all this for the high range of $200,000
divvied up among all the players.

No, that's not $200k per, that's $200k total.

No, that's not their fee plus expenses, they said their fee would be $25 to
$50k (250f the whole thing).

No that's not a down payment.

Something here stinks to high heaven.

7) Another interesting part of this meeting is that it was set up by "The
Election Center" which purports to represent the government side of the
election industry, the secretaries of state and the election officials in
each state. Yet, this is a lobbying meeting for vendors and at one point the
head of The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, refers to the vendors as "we."
(Shouldn't it be "you guys?" And why was he in this meeting at all?

(Mr. Lewis, who was never elected by anyone and who runs the private
corporation "The Election Center" has a resume that is Missing in Action,
and who hired him? But I digress)

There was also discussion that said, in essence, "of course, we'll have to
put some distance between the Election Center and this lobbying, once it
gets going. And then Lewis (Election Center) comes right out and asks the
voting machine vendors to cough up money. ITAA, who realizes this is a
gaffe, quickly says "you don't have to look after our checkbook," and
diverts the conversation.

Now, you can read the notes with a much more benign flavor. They are quite
careful about what they say, but I think they stepped over the line with
this one. Click here to read David Allen's full notes:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00175.htm

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PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:

ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES FACE AUDIT (8/12/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5790

VOTING SOFTWARE COULD ALLOW BALLOT FRAUD ON A MASSIVE SCALE (7/26/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5716

HOW TO RIG AN ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES (7/10/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5672

LEGISLATION INTRODUCED TO REQUIRE ALL VOTING MACHINES TO PRODUCE PAPER TRAIL
(5/30/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5431

VOTING MACHINES THAT LEAVES PAPER TRAILS (5/10/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5279

CONTROLLING ELECTIONS THROUGH VOTING MACHINES (5/7/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5260

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