Vote of No Confidence in E-Voting Merger, Part Two: Talking with Democracy Warrior Nancy Tobi

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By Joan Brunwasser (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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We're back for the second part of the interview with Democracy Warrior Nancy Tobi. Can you walk us through Black Box Voting's anti-trust case, Nancy?

Black Box Voting's case is spectacular. Other objections we've heard about in the news from Hart Intercivic (another e-voting company), Senator Schumer, and Voter Action focus on the detrimental effect of the proposed merger on competitive markets in the e-voting industry. This is appropriate because the issue at hand is antitrust.

However, the Black Box Voting complaint takes things to a much deeper and more meaningful level. Their complaint points to the fact that the e-voting companies now control nearly the entire voting system, from poll book management to vote-casting and -counting to results tabulation. The complaint takes note of the unconstitutional nature of this privatization of what are supposed to be public elections, and specifically the concealment of the voting system processes from public oversight through the use of computer programs, which are not observable to the human eye.

The Black Box complaint also brings to light three very important problems with the e-voting industry, and these two companies in particular (Diebold and ES&S):

1) Their troubling history of criminal and unethical business practices
2) The difficulty in tracing real ownership of ES&S, which is privately held
3) The dangerous liaisons between ES&S executives and the government officials making e-voting policy decisions and passing e-voting legislation, which - just like the LHS ballot redesign in NH - will steer product acquisition to ES&S. This same ES&S-influenced policy and legislation also promises to lock our states, cities, towns, and counties into a never ending cycle of having to purchase new and updated e-voting equipment every 3-4 years or so.

This last one, where corporate-influenced legislation steers public monies to purchasing corporate products, which we have already seen on a small scale in NH, is a total budget buster for public entities. In the case of elections, steering public monies to the acquisition of expensive computerized voting systems effectively transforms our elections from public to private control.

In this way, the Black Box Voting complaint is a hundredfold more robust and on point than any other I've read about thus far. I hope they will be listened to and will succeed. But, as they also have pointed out in their press release, each state has its own antitrust division, and each of us in our own states should be following up accordingly where appropriate.

How would the proposed merger affect you and your fellow voters in New Hampshire?

The merger actually wouldn't affect New Hampshire at all. The state of New Hampshire handed Diebold a monopoly position a few years ago already.

The principle e-voting vendor selling, programming, and "servicing" electronic voting computers in New England is a privately held company called LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. LHS Associates has a nice, cozy relationship with NH state election officials at all levels. LHS turns up at legislative and other hearings having to do with election law, and they are a proud sponsor of the New England City and Town Clerks Association. LHS executives, like all e-voting industrialists around the nation, cultivate this disturbing intimacy with our public election officials and legislators alike.

This access to NH legislators and state election officials allowed LHS Associates to help write a very specific piece of election law legislation some years back, which redesigned our NH ballots. LHS then advised the state that the redesigned ballots could only be read by Diebold optical scanners.

At the time, there were two state-approved e-voting machines, both optical scanners whose computer programs are used to tabulate the votes cast on our paper ballots: ES&S Optechs and Diebold Accuvotes.

Because LHS said only Diebold Accuvote machines could read the newly designed ballots, the state paid to replace its ES&S machines with Diebold machines. They also approved an "upgrade" to a newer version of the software inside the machines (aka firmware), which LHS claimed was required for the Accuvotes to read the newly designed ballots. Unfortunately, this meant the state "upgraded" to one of Diebold's most infamously fraud-friendly and insecure versions of their firmware; the same firmware that produced negative counts for Al Gore in Florida 2000.

This upgrade was approved by the state even following LHS President John Silvestro's testimony at a public hearing that the firmware was defective.

The legislation ultimately gave LHS contracts for new hardware and software, which netted them about $135,000.

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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election (more...)

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