E-voting Corruption record

Editorial   West Virginia Gazette    01 April 2005
FLORIDA?S 2000 nightmare over punch-card ballots caused America to stampede toward purely electronic voting. But this snowballing trend raises two new concerns: vote-stealing could be easier in digitized elections, and several computer balloting firms have shady pasts.

Most of America?s e-voting is done on machines purchased from three firms: Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Pacific, and Election Systems & Software (ES&S). Two of the companies are headed by brothers. All are led by Republican campaign donors.

Here?s a look at each firm, drawn mostly from disclosures by Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, and by former BBC reporter Lynn Landes:

Diebold

Ohio-based Diebold absorbed Global Election Systems in 2002 and retained its senior vice president, Jeffrey W. Dean, as a consultant ? even though Dean had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft. Diebold also gave a senior post to John Elder, a convicted cocaine trafficker, and to other felons.

Diebold Chairman Walden O?Dell is a GOP ?Pioneer? who raised more than $100,000 for President Bush?s re-election. In a 2004 fund-raising letter, he wrote that he was ?committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes? for Bush. Another Bush fund-raiser was Bob Urosevich, Diebold?s president (and brother of a top ES&S executive). Campaign disclosures show that Diebold chiefs have given $240,000 to politicians since 1998 ? all to Republicans.

Last September, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued Diebold, accusing the firm of lying about the security of its machines. In December, Diebold paid a $2.6 million settlement.

Two Diebold executives became leaders of Advanced Voting Solutions, formerly Shoup Voting Solutions. In the 1970s, Shoup officers were charged with corruption in Florida and Philadelphia.

Sequoia

In 1999, two Sequoia executives, Pasquale Ricci and Phil Foster, were charged with paying an $8 million bribe to Louisiana Elections Commissioner Jerry Fowler to induce him to buy their machines. Altogether, 22 people were indicted, and nine pleaded guilty.

Sequoia reportedly manufactures slot machines for gambling casinos as well as voting machines for elections.

In the past, Sequoia?s founder, Lloyd Dixon Jr., went to prison for bribing election officials in Buffalo, N.Y., and Sequoia finance chief Louis Wolfson went to prison for bribing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas.

ES&S

In the 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich launched this Omaha firm, using money from the wealthy Ahmanson family, which bankrolls Religious Right causes and crusades against the teaching of evolution. Some Ahmansons supported the Chalcedon Institute, which advocates executing gays.

ES&S absorbed another firm, Business Records Corp. In 2002, Arkansas Secretary of State Bill McCuen pleaded guilty to taking bribes from the latter.

Nebraska banker Chuck Hagel was an executive with ES&S ? until he ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican and won a stunning upset victory, with ballots counted on ES&S machines.

From all this, it?s clear that suspicion hangs over the e-voting business. Also, the machines have produced erroneous results in several states. Election officials everywhere should be wary of these outfits ? and beware of vote-stealing that might arise from their electronic devices.

Voting machines that don?t print out paper records open the door to election fraud. With no documents that can be saved for recounts, nobody can guess whether vote totals spewed from computers are accurate.

Last fall, in special session, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 3002, authorizing no-interest loans to counties to buy electronic machines ? specifying that each machine must generate ?a voter-verified paper ballot.?

Tuesday, delegates passed House Bill 2950, requiring electronic voting machines in West Virginia to print paper copies for recount purposes. It?s up for passage in the state Senate. For the integrity of Mountain State elections, it should be passed and signed into law.