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Corporate
Control of the Election Process
By John Gideon
www.VotersUnite.Org and
www.VoteTrustUSA.Org
June 15, 2005
Those who hold the sacred trust of overseeing
the election procedures and voting systems in
this country are an alphabet-soup of
organizations. The National Association of
Secretaries of State (NASS); the National
Association of State Elections Directors (NASED),
the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC),
the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC); the
Election Center. What do these groups have in
common? They either receive their funding from
the vendors or are greatly influenced by those
who do receive funding from the vendors. We can
only hope that the EAC can resist the influence.
The others haven't.
Who are these "vendors"? The vendors are the
corporate face on our elections systems — the
for-profit companies that develop and sell the
equipment used to run our elections. They are
those who have the most to gain from the
influence they buy through their donations and
dues to the alphabet soup, and that influence is
considerable. They include names like Diebold,
Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), Sequoia
Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic, Accenture,
UniSys, Accupoll, and more. In fact they are all
proudly named on the list of corporate
affiliates of NASS.
The NASS Corporate Affiliates Program
How does a company become a "corporate
affiliate."[1] of the National Association of
Secretaries of State, and what does it mean?
According to a description of the NASS Corporate
Affiliate Program, corporations can donate
annual dues in the amount of $20,000, $10,000,
$5,000, or $2,500. Those funds go directly into
the coffers of NASS. And what do the
corporations get for donating to this worthy
cause? "The NASS Corporate Affiliate Program is
a savvy way to share ideas and build
relationships with key state decision makers
while supporting the civic mission of the
association."[2]
Build relationships with key state decision
makers? In other words, unrestricted access to
lobby the people who will be spending the
taxpayers' money to buy new election equipment.
The scale of this unrestricted access is
directly, and openly, related to the amount of
"dues" that the corporation pays to the program.
The Influence of NASS over NASED
The National Association of State Elections
Directors (NASED) is not supported by outside
dues. It is supported by members' dues and is
loosely under the auspices of the Council of
State Governments. However, NASED is very
definitely influenced by the NASS, which openly
invites influence by the vendors. In nearly
every state the Secretary of State has
responsibility over the administration of
elections. Almost all the members of NASED work
for their state's Secretary of State and serve
at their pleasure. The members of NASED are also
included in three out of four NASS conferences.
"NASED is proud and fortunate to maintain
extremely positive relationships with both the
National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS)
and the Election Center. In order to maintain
those relationships and to insure the continued
sharing of information among members of each
organization, NASED meets with NASS in the
winter and alternates between NASS and The
Election Center for its summer meetings."[3]
And who are the other attendees of these
meetings? Of course the vendors get a place at
the table so they can meet, greet, and treat the
people who they hope will be their customers;
the members of NASED. Those are important
relationships because ultimately NASED decides
the fate of the “vendors” product via testing
guidelines that are written by the TGDC and
approved by the EAC and implemented (or not)[4]
by NASED.
The TGDC and Corporate Influence
The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC)
is a committee formed jointly by the Elections
Assistance Commission (EAC) and NASED. This
committee is in place for only one reason; to
formulate new standards against which all voting
systems will be tested. The new standards the
TGDC develops will replace the 2002 standards.
In "Is the NIST Technical Guidelines Development
Committee Working For You, the Voter?"[5] I
describe how these new standards are being
written in consultation with the vendors who
have to build products that comply with the
standards. It is highly apparent that the
corporations are being given a heavy hand in the
formation of the standards that they will be
held to in the future.
NASS Attacks the EAC
The Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a
federal agency set-up by Congress as part of the
Help America Vote Act of 2002. The EAC is
under-funded and under-staffed. The EAC is also
under attack by NASS.
The Associated Press reported in February, 2005
that "the National Association of Secretaries of
State approved a formal resolution that asks
Congress to dissolve its oversight organization,
the federal Election Assistance Commission,
after the 2006 elections."[6] Why would NASS
want to see the EAC dissolved? They say it's
because elections are a 'states rights' issue.
They ignore the fact that Florida 2000 and most
problems encountered in the 2004 federal
election can be attributed to the poor or
non-existent oversight of the members of NASS.
They ignore the fact that elections are held for
federal offices, and that if they had been
administering elections well, Congress would
have had no reason to establish the EAC.
If the EAC is dissolved, NASS will regain its
previous power, and through NASS the
corporations will gain even more say in how our
elections are administered.
The Elections Center Teaches Ethics but Shows
None
Much has already been printed about the Election
Center and the organization's lack of ethics in
taking contributions from the voting equipment
vendors while at the same time giving advice and
teaching ethics to county and state elections
officials.
"The Election Center, which trains election
workers and advises Congress and government
agencies on election process issues, has taken
donations from manufacturers of electronic
voting machines even as it has issued strong
statements supporting the security of the
machines."[7]
The Election Center also arranges conferences,
sponsored by vendors, where the state and local
elections officials who attend are inundated
with propaganda from the vendors. In August,
2004, elections officials from all over the U.S.
met in Washington DC where they were treated to
a dinner cruise on the Potomac sponsored by
Sequoia and a welcoming party underwritten by
Diebold. The graduation and send-off party was
sponsored by ES&S.[8]
The Vendors Purchase a Spokesman From the
Disabled Community
Even the public face of the American Association
of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Mr. Jim
Dickson, has admitted to being in the pocket of
the vendors. Mr. Dickson has testified in favor
of electronic voting machines and against
paper-based voting systems before governmental
panels, committees, and commissions across the
country. However, he doesn't begin his testimony
by saying that he receives money from the
vendors for that testimony.
In an article in Wired News on October 12, 2004,
journalist Kim Zetter reported:
"The government lobbyist for the American
Association of People with Disabilities, who has
traveled around the country testifying on behalf
of touch-screen voting, acknowledged this year
that his organization received at least $26,000
from voting companies, but only after first
denying it."[9]
The Vendors Lobby Asks That Customers Buy
Defective and Not Effective
Very recently another ingredient in the alphabet
soup has spoken out. The Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA); a coalition of,
and lobbying agent for, voting equipment
manufacturers; testified before the EAC that
counties and states should not wait any longer
for new standards, but should purchase their new
election equipment now. They testified, "Under a
best-case scenario, it will be difficult for
states and counties to meet the HAVA deadlines
for the purchase and implementation of
accessible voting systems"[10]
In other words, "Don't wait until new standards
are set and the voting systems have been brought
up to standards that may improve those systems.
It is better to go out and purchase the
equipment that is still being qualified to
standards written in 1990. Buy defective and not
effective."
What Must be Done to Counter the Vendors'
Influence?
The voting machine corporations are spending
millions to influence the decisions that relate
to the qualification and sales of voting
systems. They are influencing the development of
new voting system standards, whether those
standards have to be followed, who buys what
type of system, and every step in between. The
vendors are in too much control. We can only
wrest that control from the vendors by
methodically putting out the facts to inform the
misinformed and by reducing the vendors'
influence on our decision makers.
The news from Miami-Dade County, Florida is a
strikingly big step.[11] The county supervisor
of elections is recommending dumping the flawed
and expensive electronic voting machines and
returning to paper ballots — in order to save
the taxpayers' money.
With easy access to the county officials,
through NASS, NASED, and the Election Center,
vendor lobbyists managed to sell defective
election equipment to Miami-Dade. Dedicated
voting activists researched the facts and
brought them forward with a determination that
could not be ignored. None of the alphabet-soup
organizations could deny that what the activists
were saying was true.
The activists were also aided by the fact that
the county has a new elections director who had
no hand in the decision to buy the DRE voting
machines. Stepping into a new position, outside
of vendor control and with no risk to his own
credibility, he was able to declare that the
county made a huge mistake and wasted millions
of dollars of taxpayer's money.
If all our election officials were out from
under the influence of the vendors, if they
weren't defensive about poorly informed
decisions they had made because of that
influence, what would the face on our election
system look like? Certainly it's worth finding
out.
[1] 2005 NASS Corporate Affiliate Roster;
http://www.nass.org/corpaffiliates/roster.html
[2] NASS Corporate Affiliate Program; Pg. 4;
http://www.nass.org/corp_brochure.pdf
[3] "Conferences", National Association of State
Elections Directors; http://www.nased.org/conferences.htm
[4] “Is HAVA Being Abused?”, by John Gideon and
Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite.Org; http://www.votersunite.org/info/hava-abuse1.asp
[5] Is the NIST Technical Guidelines Development
Committee Working For You, the Voter? By John
Gideon, http://www.votetrustusa.org/blogs/nist&tdgc.htm
[6] "Election Officials Work on Making Changes"
by Robert Tanner, Associated Press, February 8,
2005;
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/02/07/national/w121345S54.DTL
[7] "Group that called electronic vote secure
got makers' aid", by Linda K. Harris,
Philadelphia Enquirer, March 25, 2004; http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8273865.htm?1c
[8] "Diebold Wines and Dines Officials", by
David Corn, blog in The Nation, August 26, 2004;
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=1708
[9] "Diebold and the Disabled", by Kim Zetter,
Wired News, October 12, 2004; http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65292,00.html
[10] "ITAA Warns Purchase Delays will Endanger
HAVA Compliance", Press Release, Information
Technology Association of America, May 26, 2005;
http://www.itaa.org/eweb/Dynamicpage.aspx?webcode=PRTemplate&wps_key=44e3eb88-23bf-43b1-be43-55b99ccdfcff
[11] "Voting system change in Dade likely", by
Noaki Schwartz And Tere Figueras Negrete, Miami
Herald, May 28, 2005; http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11759284.htm
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