Guess Who's Going to Dinner with Diebold, Sequoia, and Electronic ES&S? The Groups Responsible for Insuring Electronic Votes Are Secure.
by Amanda Lang
When speakers from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) attend the August 24-28, 2004, Election Center's conference for federal and state election employees in Washington, DC, they will be participating in a huge conflict of interest as they eat, drink, and make-merry at the Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S (voting machine vendors) sponsored events. Sequoia Voting Systems is co-sponsor for a dinner cruise on the Potomac and a monuments by night tour. A welcome reception compliments of Diebold with ES&S throwing in a graduation luncheon and awards ceremonies. It being Washington , members of the House and Senate are also invited.
The EAC, supposedly an independent bipartisan agency, was appointed by President George W. Bush following the Election Fiasco of 2000, and is authorized by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to serve as "...a national clearinghouse and resource for the comparison of information" on various matters involving the administration of Federal elections. The EAC wants to be more than a clearinghouse apparently -- EAC Chairman, DeForest Soaries**, recently authored a letter to Homeland Security czar, Tom Ridge, requesting his agency be "the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election" if a terrorist attack is launched in the U.S. As a result, Ridge's office has requested that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place. **Soaries, a Bush appointee, two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress.
The Election Center is a nonprofit organization, which trains election workers and advises Congress and government agencies on election process issues. The Election Center also provides staff services to the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) for the voting systems program. NASED is responsible for the testing and certification (through independent laboratories) of voting systems hardware and software manufactured by Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S Disturbing -- It could not be more inappropriate for this non-profit, non-partisan organization to accept money and funding from Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S whose machines they are tasked to monitor. The Election Center executive director, R. Doug Lewis, confirmed in March that the Center has taken donations from all three vendors. The Sequoia donations surfaced on the Center
