*Thanks to Victoria DelSoul for the awesome graphic!
PING – Hugo is at it again!
Please FReepmail me if you would like on/off my Hugo/Venezuela Ping list.
Posted on 03/28/2006 9:32:53 AM PST by RWR8189
The greater threat to our nation's security comes not from Dubai and its pro-Western government, but from Venezuela, where software engineers with links to the leftist, anti-American regime of Hugo Chávez are programming electronic voting machines that will soon power U.S. elections.
Congress spent two weeks overreacting to news that Dubai Ports World would operate several American ports, including Miami's, but a better target for their hysteria would be the acquisition by Smartmatic International of California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, whose machines serve millions of U.S. voters. That Smartmatic -- which has been accused by Venezuela's opposition of helping Chávez rig elections in his favor -- now controls a major U.S. e-voting firm should give pause to anybody who thinks that replacing our antiquated butterfly ballots and hanging chads will restore Americans' faith in our electoral process.
Consider the lack of confidence Venezuelans have in their voting system. Anti-Chávez groups have such little faith in Smartmatic's machines that they refuse to run candidates in elections anymore as reports surface of fraud and irregularities from Chávez's 2004 victory in a recall referendum. Yet somehow Smartmatic International and its Venezuelan owners were able to purchase Sequoia last year without the deal receiving any scrutiny from federal regulators -- including the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), which is tasked with determining whether foreign takeovers pose security risks.
CFIUS generally investigates such transactions only when the parties voluntarily submit themselves to review -- which Smartmatic did not do. But it retains the authority to initiate an investigation when it suspects a takeover compromises national security.
Smartmatic has a brief but controversial history. The company was started in Caracas during the late 1990s by engineers Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola. They worked out of downtown Caracas providing small-scale technology services to Latin American banks. Despite having no election experience, the tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100 million contract by the Chávez-dominated National Electoral Council to replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall vote.
When the council announced the deal, it disingenuously described Smartmatic as a Florida company, though Smartmatic's main operations were in Caracas and the firm had incorporated only a small office in Boca Raton. It then emerged that Smartmatic's ''partner'' in the deal, Bizta Corp., also directed by Anzola and Mugica, was partly owned by the Venezuelan government through a series of intermediary shell corporations. Venezuela initially denied its investment but eventually sold its stake.
When the vote finally came, exit polls by New York's Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates showed Chávez had been defeated 59 to 41 percent; however, when official tallies were announced, the numbers flipped to 58-42 in favor of Chávez. Venezuela's electoral council briefly posted machine-by-machine tallies on the Internet but removed them as mathematicians from MIT, Harvard and other universities began questioning suspicious patterns in the results.
Flush with cash from its Venezuelan adventures, Smartmatic International incorporated in Delaware last year and purchased Sequoia, announcing the deal as a merger between two U.S. companies.
Smartmatic says the recall vote was clean and that it is independent of the Chávez government. Responding to my inquiries, Smartmatic-Sequoias sent a written statement: ``Sequoia's products consist only of voting devices and systems, all of which must be federally and state tested and certified prior to use in an election. As Sequoia's products do not have military, defense or national security applications, they do not fall within the parameters of the matters governed by CFIUS.''
In fact, Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation, which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans Mugica and Anzola and possibly others.
Why Smartmatic has chosen yet again to abuse the corporate form apparently to conceal the nationality and identity of its true owners is a question that should worry anyone who votes using one of its machines. Congress panicked upon hearing that our ports would be run by an American ally, Dubai, but never asked whether America's actual enemies in Venezuela have been able to acquire influence in our electoral process.
I find it interesting to observe how both the left and the right are both afraid of e-voting because they feel the other side will tamper with the results.
This begs the question, just who is tampering, if anyone?
A hint: paper ballots are made out of paper, and punch cards are made out of card stock, which is thicker and stiffer, and can have incompeltely punched chads.
Here in our county in WV we have used paper ballots since elections began in the 1800s, and there has never been any outcry about hanging chads in the past 200 years. People got a piece of paper with all the races and levies, and they also got a pencil to mark their votes. Then actual human beings (of bothe major parties) would sit there and open up the folded paper ballots and make a tally. The actual paper ballots were then sealed in a box for the later canvassing and possible challenges. (Unfortunately, this has been changed due to the federal government offering to "help" pay for laptop computers for electronic voting, which many of us resisted.)
Well, we still do have a paper ballot...kind of.
The new machines are set up to do your entire ballot and then when you are finished it prints a ballot that has markings similar to the back of our driver licenses. That ballot is then put in the ballot box.
I wonder if Hugo is the one that forced me to chose English or Spanish in order that I may even BEGIN my voting? Talk about a disenfranchised voter ! ;)
True, and a lot of it is coming from the inside, not the outside.
Paper ballots and ink everybody's fingers.... and yes, by the way, present a photo ID at the time of registering AND voting, thank you very much.
another can of worms to open....
If your chad is not completely punched then you didn't take the time (or care enough about your vote) to make sure that "chads" were not "hanging".
Hint: My Electronic voting results in a paper ballot.
Another hint: When I punched out chads I inspected my ballot to make sure it was proper. If people do not do that it is their own fault....not the ballots fault.
If you care to have something besides a condiscending attitude I will be happy to talk to you, but keep in mind I can give as good as I get. So mind your business.
Well said...Old Soviet propaganda trick...
My only concern with any government IT effort is that there is often a really gap in competency and if someone really wanted to pull something off they probably could.
I hope there are control protocols in place. Unfortunately, my hopes have been dashed many times before.
But in the USSR the population was disarmed, a stunt like this will spark an armed revolt in the U.S.
This won't be a big deal in the news. LA Times likes and respects Chavez and understands his politics.
Why, oh why is this even in the realm of possibility!?
Bookmarking for reference after the election.
Actually, my entire point was that there is a false dichotomy set up between the two forms of electronic voting systems: 1) computer-readable cards and 2)laptop computer voting. Method (2) has now been imposed on us due to publicity elsewhere about the problems with (1). But there is a (3): sheets of paper on which one marks an X next to a candidates's name, and which has absolutely nothing to do with computers. If there is political corruption, it is at the precinct level, and that'w why the Republican and Democrat parties each supply half the poll workers TO WATCH EACH OTHER, as it has been since before electricity was invented. With both forms of electronic counting, there is no hope of inter-party monitoring and localized control, and all the political corruption merely takes place far away.
I remember during the Florida unpleasantness there was one county that came up with the exact same count every recount. It turned out that they were using paper fill in the bubble optical scan ballots. I thought at the time that that seemed more accurate.
Actually, I prefer the original Baron Rothschild's statement: "I don't care who wins an election as long as I control the money supply."
The Federal Reserve is run by his descendants, with six other banking families, without any interference from our government in any way.
I don't like to be critical of the administration, but if an agency is well organized, size matters little. Their either awake or asleep. In this case, again, unorganized, and in a dead sleep. Also, when they should be the first, are apparently the last to know.
On voting. I don't believe or trust digital voting machines. In my opinion, every American eligible voter, should have a voter ID, and allowed to vote only once, on a paper ballot. Because of apartheid, I used to be death on national ID cards, but sinced 9-11, and illegals voting, I've changed my thinking.
This has GOT to change before November.
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