Surely not the Democrats, they don't believe a problem exists...
The top three electonic voting machine companies Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia.
This article was published in The Miami Herald on March 27, 2006. It is
reposted here with permission of the author.
The greater threat to our nation's security comes not from Dubai and its
pro-Western government, but from Venezuela, where software engineers with
links to the leftist, anti-American regime of Hugo Chávez are programming
electronic voting machines that will soon power U.S. elections.
Congress spent two weeks overreacting to news that Dubai Ports World would
operate several American ports, including Miami's, but a better target for
their hysteria would be the acquisition by Smartmatic International of
California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, whose machines serve millions of
U.S. voters. That Smartmatic -- which has been accused by Venezuela's
opposition of helping Chávez rig elections in his favor -- now controls a
major U.S. e-voting firm should give pause to anybody who thinks that
replacing our antiquated butterfly ballots and hanging chads will restore
Americans' faith in our electoral process.
Consider the lack of confidence Venezuelans have in their voting system.
Anti-Chávez groups have such little faith in Smartmatic's machines that they
refuse to run candidates in elections anymore as reports surface of fraud
and irregularities from Chávez's 2004 victory in a recall referendum. Yet
somehow Smartmatic International and its Venezuelan owners were able to
purchase Sequoia last year without the deal receiving any scrutiny from
federal regulators -- including the Treasury Department's Committee on
Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), which is tasked with
determining whether foreign takeovers pose security risks.
CFIUS generally investigates such transactions only when the parties
voluntarily submit themselves to review -- which Smartmatic did not do. But
it retains the authority to initiate an investigation when it suspects a
takeover compromises national security.
Smartmatic has a brief but controversial history. The company was started in
Caracas during the late 1990s by engineers Antonio Mugica and Alfredo
Anzola. They worked out of downtown Caracas providing small-scale technology
services to Latin American banks. Despite having no election experience, the
tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100
million contract by the Chávez-dominated National Electoral Council to
replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall vote.
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1126&Itemid=51
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