[Clips] Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines?

Tue Mar 28 14:23:54 PST 2006

--- begin forwarded text

  Delivered-To: clips at philodox.com
  Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:32:09 -0500
  To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
  From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines?
  Reply-To: rah at philodox.com
  Sender: clips-bounces at philodox.com

  Again, boys and girls, spoken slowly: With electronic voting, you can
  either have secret ballots, or not sell your vote, but not both.

  With equity, it doesn't matter. The whole *point* is to sell your ballot.

  Thus, once again, financial cryptography is the only cryptography that
  matters. :-).

  And political cryptography, like politics itself, is proven, once again, to
  be about nothing more than fraud and extortion.

  Cheers,
  RAH
  -------

<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/forget_dubai_worry_about_smart.html>

  RealClearPolitics
  March 28, 2006

  Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines?

  By Richard Brand

  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 Chavez 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 Chavez 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-Chavez 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 Chavez 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 Chavez-dominated National Electoral
  Council to replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall
  vote.

  When the council announced the deal, it disingenuously described Smartmatic
  as a Florida company, though Smartmatic's main operations were in Caracas
  and the firm had incorporated only a small office in Boca Raton. It then
  emerged that Smartmatic's ''partner'' in the deal, Bizta Corp., also
  directed by Anzola and Mugica, was partly owned by the Venezuelan
  government through a series of intermediary shell corporations. Venezuela
  initially denied its investment but eventually sold its stake.

  When the vote finally came, exit polls by New York's Penn, Schoen & Berland
  Associates showed Chavez had been defeated 59 to 41 percent; however, when
  official tallies were announced, the numbers flipped to 58-42 in favor of
  Chavez. Venezuela's electoral council briefly posted machine-by-machine
  tallies on the Internet but removed them as mathematicians from MIT,
  Harvard and other universities began questioning suspicious patterns in the
  results.

  Flush with cash from its Venezuelan adventures, Smartmatic International
  incorporated in Delaware last year and purchased Sequoia, announcing the
  deal as a merger between two U.S. companies.

  Smartmatic says the recall vote was clean and that it is independent of the
  Chavez government. Responding to my inquiries, Smartmatic-Sequoias sent a
  written statement: ``Sequoia's products consist only of voting devices and
  systems, all of which must be federally and state tested and certified
  prior to use in an election. As Sequoia's products do not have military,
  defense or national security applications, they do not fall within the
  parameters of the matters governed by CFIUS.''

  In fact, Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation,
  which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a
  number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed
  investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans Mugica and Anzola and
  possibly others.

  Why Smartmatic has chosen yet again to abuse the corporate form apparently
  to conceal the nationality and identity of its true owners is a question
  that should worry anyone who votes using one of its machines. Congress
  panicked upon hearing that our ports would be run by an American ally,
  Dubai, but never asked whether America's actual enemies in Venezuela have
  been able to acquire influence in our electoral process.

  Richard Brand is a second-year law student at New York University and a
  former staff writer for The Miami Herald.

  This article first ran in The Miami Herald. It is reprinted with the
  author's permission.

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'