Consider this scenario: If Avante wins its patent lawsuit against the "big three" vendors, HR 811 could bring billions of dollars to Holt's home district. Here's how it could happen.
The latest version of HR 811, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 [1], amends HAVA's Section 257(a) by adding an additional billion dollars for municipalities "to modify or replace its voting systems" in accordance with Section 2 of Rush Holt's bill. Many election integrity advocates have (erroneously) looked to this bill as a mandate that will require voter-verified paper ballots (or "audit trails") to be added to all of the nation's Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting equipment.
But back in July 2006, I wrote an OpEd piece [2] describing a lawsuit by Avante against Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S that stands poised to derail much of the Federal and State VVPAT legislation. This case grinds merrily along and trial has been scheduled for May 2008. Should Avante win their suit, they have requested relief that could specifically include: 1) permanently enjoining the sale of all infringing equipment produced by Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S; 2) recalling all infringing equipment; 3) destroying or delivering to Avante the infringing equipment; and 4) awarding infringement damages to Avante including treble damages for willful infringement.
In a one-two punch, Avante's key patent, #7036730 "Electronic Voting Aparatus, System and Method," also includes claims that pertain to "a Braille device," "an aural device," and "voice recognition apparatus."[3] Conveniently, Holt's bill happens to also include requirements that there be "at least one voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place" that "allows the voter to privately and independently verify the individual, durable paper ballot through the conversion of the human-readable printed or marked vote selections into accessible form."
So, Avante could be the "spoiler" in thwarting implementation of Holt's bill, if the court rules in their favor and they (or the Judge) choose to recall or destroy all of the deployed and infringing VVPAT and disability accessible voting equipment, just a few months prior to the November 2008 Presidential election. Alternatively, all of HR 811's $1B, plus a potentially large chunk of the prior $3B bonanza that voting system vendors had received from the 2002 HAVA legislation, may wander back to Holt's election district, since Avante, as Mark Crispin Miller recently noted [4], just happens to be located in his "backyard."
Indeed, this metaphor is considerably more accurate than even Mark had presumed. Avante's website [5] shows a picture of their 52,000 square foot corporate headquarters, situated on 16 acres at 70 Washington Road, Princeton Junction, NJ. Rush Holt's website [6] lists his District Office as 50 Washington Road, West Windsor, NJ. As it happens, these two properties are directly adjacent to each other (separated only by some landscaping and their buildings' parking lots). I've posted a few photos on my website that show the juxtaposition of their office signs. [7] This is not a new development, Avante's office has been "next door" to Rush's for the entire duration of time since their parent company (AIT) entered the voting business.
Holt Avante Signs
But it doesn't stop here. As Bo Lipari revealed a few weeks ago [8], Avante (along with Microsoft) was an active player in the recent attempt to rewrite New York State's source code review laws. Their Vice President issued an email to all of the State's election commissioners and officials [9], complaining that they do not have sufficient time, nor perhaps inclination, to comply with the law, while also mootly asserting that "there is no intent to reduce the integrity of the vote." Although New York held firm in maintaining its source code escrow and review statutes, the spineless U.S. House of Representatives, apparently caved to "Microsoft and others in the proprietary software industry" according to Holt's counsel, Michelle Mulder. Never mind the fact that Mulder had dissuaded many election integrity advocates from providing input, with her repeatedly assertions that the wording of the bill, as originally introduced, was a "done deal"; and never mind that she had also failed to warn these advocates that the wording was subsequently being co-opted by "the software industry" (including perhaps Avante?) while it was in committee.
Ultimately what emerged in Holt's revised bill is a requirement that could potentially become the first Federal law to instantiate the use of nondisclosure agreements for voting systems (unless State laws waive them) and to further provide that such agreements "shall be governed by the trade secret laws of the applicable State." Despite this explicit vendor-partisan language, various Holt support groups, such as the dubiously-named People For the American Way, have continued to falsely claim that "Rep. Holt's bill requires ... for ALL federal elections starting in 2008: ... No Secret Source Code – ALL voting machine vendors MUST make the machines' software available for inspection" [10] when, in fact, exactly the OPPOSITE is what this bill now says! Interestingly, Holt's own FAQ sheet on the bill [11] entirely avoids mentioning that there's been a complete reversal on his earlier "open source" stance and focuses on activist bashing along with hammering home the fact that the bill does not ban DRE's (great for Avante, since they believe they hold the key patents on the VVPAT DREs).
If any of the above bothers you, try contacting Holt directly (even though you probably won't be satisfied with the response), or better yet, spread the word and let your own congressperson know that this bad piece of compromised and potentially pork-barrel legislation for Holt's "backyard buddy" is far worse than no legislation at all.
Rebecca Mercuri has been in the forefront of the voting integrity movement since 1989. She provides expert witness services for elections and other forensic computing matters.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Until Paul Lehto, Mark Crispin Miller, and now you, Rebecca, pulled these threads together, I had been stymied trying to figure out that darn money trail for the text converter.
We know the text read back requirement was stuck into the EAC voting system standards back in 2005. The EAC's own advisory group, the Standards Board, pulled it out in August 2005, and then someone stuck it back in when the standards were released in Dec. 2005.
Then Mulder of Holt's office stuck it into their bill, on the advice of someone (we don't know who) who told her that she needed to add this requirement from the EAC standards.
Why, out of the 1,000 pages or so of requirements, did Michelle NEED to add this particular one?
The question has dogged me for months. It was hard to in down WHO was really going to be making the bucks off this thing, because the matter of whether or not such a device even existed was never satisfactorily resolved. But the thing with patent currency, is you don't really need a product anyway. You just need the damn patent.
So now we have an answer. Is it THE answer? Maybe.
Someone ought to be deposing Ms. Mulder of Holt's office to find out just who it was who told her that requirement had to be added to the bill.
Then someone ought to be deposing the four EAC 2005 Commissioners and their Executive Director, Tom Wilkie (of New York, incidentally), as to which one of them added the requirement back into their standards in Dec. 2005, after it had been removed by the nation's top state and local election officials on their own Standards Board.
And yes, just what is the connection, if any, between PFAW - the biggest pusher of this text-speech BS - and Avante-Holt?
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Nancy Tobi (79 articles, 4 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments) on Friday, Jul 13, 2007 at 3:42:18 PM
A patent is a "negative" right to exclude others from making
using, selling or offering to sell the patented invention. So in a marketing sense, you can't even TALK about the invention that's patented, even though you independently developed the invention yourself and have absolutely no idea about the prior patent of the other person.
When Patents intersect with democracy, this right of exclusion, unless subject to a democracy exception, blows a whole in democracy and creates a monopoly on aspects of democracy for a private entity because a patent is a 20 year legal monopoly.
Avante is requesting that all infringing machines (nearly all voting machines both touchscreen and optical scan) be destroyed as infringing on one or more of its 3 patents. They are holding the machinery of democracy itself hostage for their royalty payments. too bad no one answers the phone anymore if you dial 911 for democracy. Rush Holt attempted that and totally screwed it up, and we got HR 811 instead.
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Paul Lehto (32 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Jul 14, 2007 at 4:58:10 AM
I don't personally know Rush Holt (and he is not my representative), but his reputation is pristine. What gives here? I don't particularly like this legislation in every detail, but I like it broadly as a first step in reform. I don't get why someone with your credentials would try to make him out a cheat. Do you really think so? I don't.
Arguments against the details of Holt's bill carry more weight with me when I don't smell the gutter stink of smear beneath the surface. Sorry, you just lost me.
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astronobot (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Sunday, Jul 15, 2007 at 1:43:27 PM
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