On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gregory Hicks <ghicks () cadence com>
Date: September 13, 2004 1:39:03 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab
Reply-To: Gregory Hicks <ghicks () cadence com>


<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/opinion/12sun2.html? 
th=&pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times
September 12, 2004

On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab

As doubts have grown about the reliability of electronic voting, some
of its loudest defenders have been state and local election officials.
Many of those same officials have financial ties to voting machine
companies. While they may sincerely think that electronic voting
machines are so trustworthy that there is no need for a paper record of
votes, their views have to be regarded with suspicion until their
conflicts are addressed.

Computer scientists, who understand the technology better than anyone
else, have been outspoken about the perils of electronic voting. Good
government groups, like Common Cause, are increasingly mobilizing
grass-roots opposition. And state governments in a growing number of
states, including California and Ohio, have pushed through much-needed
laws that require electronic voting machines to produce paper records.

 But these groups have faced intense opposition from election
 officials. At a hearing this spring, officials from Georgia,
California and Texas dismissed concerns about electronic voting, and
argued that voter-verifiable paper trails, which voters can check to
ensure their vote was correctly recorded, are impractical. The Election
Center, which does election training and policy work, and whose board
is dominated by state and local election officials, says the real
problem is people who "scare voters and public officials with claims
that the voting equipment and/or its software can be manipulated to
change the outcome of elections."

What election officials do not mention, however, are the close ties
they have to the voting machine industry. A disturbing number end up
working for voting machine companies. When Bill Jones left office as
California's secretary of state in 2003, he quickly became a consultant
to Sequoia Voting Systems. His assistant secretary of state took a
full-time job there. Former secretaries of state from Florida and
Georgia have signed on as lobbyists for Election Systems and Software
and Diebold Election Systems. The list goes on.

Even while in office, many election officials are happy to accept
voting machine companies' largess. The Election Center takes money from
Diebold and other machine companies, though it will not say how much.
At the center's national conference last month, the companies
underwrote meals and a dinner cruise.

 Forty-three percent of the budget of the National Association of
Secretaries of State comes from voting machine companies and other
vendors, and at its conference this summer in New Orleans, Accenture,
which compiles voter registration databases for states, sponsored a
dinner at the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge.

 There are also reports of election officials being directly offered
 gifts.  Last year, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a voting
machine company was offering concert tickets and limousine rides while
competing for a contract worth as much as $100 million, if not more.

When electronic voting was first rolled out, election officials and
voting machine companies generally acted with little or no public
participation.  But now the public is quite rightly insisting on
greater transparency and more say in the decisions. If election
officials want credibility in this national discussion, they must do
more to demonstrate that their only loyalty is to the voter.

Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at
nytimes.com/makingvotescount.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory Hicks                        | Principal Systems Engineer
Cadence Design Systems               | Direct:   408.576.3609
555 River Oaks Pkwy M/S 6B1          | Fax:      408.894.3400
San Jose, CA 95134                   | Internet: ghicks () cadence com

I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.  I will surely
learn a great deal today.

"A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for
lunch.  Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the
decision." - Benjamin Franklin

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they
be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton


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