Posted on 04/08/2006 4:31:45 PM PDT by RWR8189
One of Chicago's most powerful aldermen has a conspiracy theory for the voting problems experienced during the March primary. Alderman Ed Burke wants to know why the Chicago board of elections would pick a Venezuelan company to supply the city's new voting machines, a company Burke believes has the ability to rig an election for political gain.
Both the voting machine company and the board of elections are calling alderman Burke's suggestion of a conspiracy absurd. This happened during a city council hearing Friday on problems during last month's primary. Alderman Ed Burke, whose wife just got appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court, took back the spotlight Friday at a wild city council hearing where Burke said the vote counting problems on primary election night may be part of an international conspiracy led by the president of Venezuela, who is engaged in a war of words with the Bush administration.
"We've stumbled across what could be the international conspiracy to subvert the electoral process in the United States of America ," said Ald. Ed Burke, finance committee chairman.
Alderman Burke says at least 15 Venezuelans, who may not have been in the country legally, worked side-by-side with Chicago election officials on primary night March 21, which turned out to be a vote-counting nightmare.
Burke says the fiasco may have been politically motivated, because the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is considered an enemy of the United States and may be connected to a Venezuelan company that owns a US firm that provided Chicago and Cook County with the new voting machines that contributed to the election night problems.
"I don't know how anybody could hire a company that's ownership is hidden, and traces its roots to Venezuela, where they've been involved with the dictator of Venezuela who Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says is an enemy of the United States," said Burke.
The Venezualans were providing technical assistance, not tabulating votes, and the conspiracy theory is over the top, according to election officials and the company that provided the new equipment.
"The ability of Chavez to be manipulating the vote in Chicago is impossible" said Jack Blaine, Sequoia Voting Systems president.
"We have enough redundant security measures in place to protect the accuracy of the vote," said Langdon Neal, Chicago election board.
The suggestion that loose screws on new machines contributed to election night problems is a perfect metaphor to describe a city council hearing featuring more questions than answers.
"I think that you belong to the secret brotherhood of I don't know, and I found your testimony so far to be not credible," said Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th Ward.
Despite all of the criticism, the president of the voting machine company said a post-election inspection of 1,000 machines uncovered only three mechanical problems, so most of the tabulating delays were human error. But he is promising a new set of more user-friendly machines by November, and city election officials are promising a better job of training election judges and checking out machines in advance.
It is, however, probably too late to change companies, and the machine makers, Sequoia and its Venezuelan parent, Smartmatic, will eventually get paid the last $16 million from its contract with the city and the county.
Why would you pick a Venezuelan company to supply anything?
Hugo Chavez Wants Your VoteVenezuela’s potential takeover of U.S. voting machines
Of course no one in Chicago would be interested in influencing an election result..
This article appeared last week in The Miami Herald.
Link:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14194451.htm
ELECTRONIC VOTING
Forget Dubai -- worry about Smartmatic instead
BY RICHARD BRAND
rmb381@nyu.edu
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.
Richard Brand is a second-year law student at New York University and a former staff writer for The Miami Herald.
And this appeared in Investor's Business Daily on Thursday:
Hugo Wants Your Vote
Posted 4/5/2006
Elections: If 9-11 taught us anything, it was to be wary of asym- metrical threats from hostile entities no matter what size. We might just get ambushed again if the Venezuelan government ends up controlling our elections.
Don't think it can't happen. A Venezuelan-linked company called Smartmatic has bought out a U.S. electronic voting device firm called Sequoia, which holds contracts for elections in Chicago and elsewhere.
U.S. foreign investment bureaucrats aren't worried because no military secrets are involved. But that kind of thinking can blindside our democratic institutions as we look for threats to our hardware.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the foremost meddler in foreign elections in the Western hemisphere and has been accused of secretly financing candidates in Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Mexico. Why wouldn't he be interested in influencing vote outcomes here?
He's already trying to influence our politics through a congressional lobbying effort and a cheap fuel program for welfare recipients explicitly linked to congressional participation.
These and other shenanigans signal interest in influencing perceptions in the U.S.
There's plenty of domestic white noise about electronic machines to cloud the issue. But the problems Chavez could cause are in a different league.
Even as regulators dismiss security threats, the performance of Smartmatic in Venezuela's own elections raises questions.
For example, 82% of voters there sat out last December's Smartmatic-operational congressional race on shattered confidence in the system.
The Smartmatic machines are capable of controlling the speed at which votes are transmitted, creating long lines to discourage voting. They can also instantaneously tally as results come in, giving favored sides information to manipulate turnout.
Mathematicians accuse them of flipping results. And combined with fingerprint machines, they can match votes to voters, violating ballot secrecy.
There may be no problem with Smartmatic working U.S. elections, but just wait for a close call and see how credible the result will be. With as many problems as U.S. elections have seen, the one thing it doesn't need is to import Venezuela's electoral wreckage.
Venezualan communists supplying communist voting machines for Chicago communists.
What's wrong with that?
Owners of many (surely most) Venezuelan companies hate Chavez.
They are just trying to hang on as long as they can.
Corruption in Chicago? Why I'm just flabbergasted.
Looks like one more reason NOT to vote in 2008. :-o
Correct. Which is why all of them live in South Florida, but travel south to Caracas once a month to make withdrawals into their suitcases.
More and more, but not all.
There is a lot of cash in the Venezualan economy yet.
Sheesh, what's his problem? Even if there was a conspiracy so what? Chavez and the Chicago Rats bat for the same team.
Funny that the press' (ABC local) first reaction was that Ald. Burke was just trying to throw sand in the gears of a deal that was lost by one of his "constituents."
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