As the American congressional elections approach the issue of electronic voting machines continues to be in the news, this time with more of the focus on the company Sequoia (as opposed to the notorious Diebold)
In his series Democracy at Risk, Lou Dobbs has been broadcasting a great deal of information about the electronic voting machines and trying to highlight the importance of the issue and the danger of these machines. Of course, any attempt to ensure fairer elections anywhere is a welcome development, but part of the reason for this post is to highlight what an incompetent messenger Dobbs is and how sad the state of American democracy is if the nation must rely on someone like him (and CNN) to defend its democratic institutions. I will be referring periodically to his broadcast from last Sunday.
In terms of the electronic voting machines and Sequoia, there has been a fair amount of discussion recently concerning the question of ownership of the company. From the New York Times three days ago:
Officials of a major American voting-machine company that has come under federal scrutiny because of its primary owner’s past business ties to the leftist government of Venezuela said yesterday that the company had voluntarily submitted to a federal investigation into its purchase.
The American company, Sequoia Voting Systems, was bought in March 2005 by the Smartmatic Corporation, a Venezuelan-owned software company whose only previous experience in the voting-machine business had been to overhaul Venezuela’s electoral machinery before a referendum that confirmed Hugo Chávez as president in August 2004.
I fail to see what the term 'leftist' has to do with anything but you know that 'liberal media.' At least this article noted 'the past business ties." The Times article from two days prior hinted at a more sinister involvement by the Chavez's government:
...Seven months before that voting contract was awarded, a Venezuelan government financing agency invested more than $200,000 into a smaller technology company, owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic, that joined with Smartmatic as a minor partner in the bid.
In return, the government agency was given a 28 percent stake in the smaller company and a seat on its board, which was occupied by a senior government official who had previously advised Mr. Chávez on elections technology. But Venezuelan officials later insisted that the money was merely a small-business loan and that it was repaid before the referendum.
Now here is Dobbs on last Sunday's 'Democracy at Risk."
Coming up next here, one voting machine manufacturer was once run by a fellow who liked George Bush a lot. Another e-voting machine company is run by friends of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Are you feeling better already? Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: The voting machine company, Sequoia, likes to point out its own history as a U.S. firm and as one of the top players in electronic voting. The company has managed thousands of electronic elections, in hundreds of jurisdictions in 21 states, but the company is Venezuelan-owned....
This is simply incorrect. Then there was this that can be seen directly the video (though curiously not appearing in the transcript)
...a Venezuelan company owns one of the leading supplier of electronic voting machines and that company has ties to the government of Venezuelan's strongman Hugo Chavez"
Cue dramatic music. (I'll address the 'strongman claim further below). Finally there was this from the transcript of the show (Pilgrim is the CNN reporter):
...PILGRIM: Antonio Mohica (ph) and his partner Alfredo Anzola (ph) received a small business loan from the Venezuelan government only months before the recall election. These corporation documents from Venezuela show the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of the stock of another company they started, Bisda (ph), which adapted voting software for the Smartmatic machines in the 2004 elections.
The same document shows a Chavez government minister, Omar Mantio (ph) was on the board of directors. The Chavez government gave Bisda, Smartmatic and another company a $91 million contract to run voting machines for the 2004 election. The next year the owners of Smartmatic bought Sequoia, one of the top electronic voting companies in the United States for $16 million.
The issue of ownership (beyond the question of claims of proprietary software - a question for every single private company involved in the election process. The companies claim the right to not disclose the source code because it is a trade secret) is not only irrelevant, Dobbs' claims about the company being run by 'friends of Hugo Chavez is entirely inaccurate. (Much more on Chavez, Dobbs portrayal of him and the referendum in Venezuela along with Sequoia's involvement in it in a moment). First from Sequoia's website:
Sequoia Ownership - Sequoia Voting Systems is a subsidiary of Smartmatic, a private company incorporated in Delaware with principal offices in Boca Raton, Florida. While a private firm, Smartmatic is and has always been open about its owners. A controlling interest is held by its founder and CEO Antonio Mugica, a dual Spanish and Venezuelan citizen.
There is absolutely no ownership of Sequoia Voting Systems or its parent Smartmatic by the Venezuelan government or any other government - foreign or domestic."
Regarding the 28% stake the New York Times article cites, the company explains:
There is confusion over a 300,000,000 bolivares (approximately $150,000) loan made in 2003 by the Venezuelan Industrial Credit Fund (Fondo de Credito Industrial) - the equivalent of the U.S. Small Business Administration - in Bizta, a software company in which Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica and Smartmatic co-founder Alfredo Anzola were investors. Bizta pledged 28% of its shares as a guarantee for this routine loan. The loan was paid in full in 2004 prior to the Recall Referendum.
The company's president Jack Blaine states:
"The notion that hostile foreigners have acquired or seek influence in the US voting process simply doesn't stand up to even the most limited scrutiny. We welcome concerned citizens and political leaders to review the facts about Smartmatic's acquisition of Sequoia Voting Systems closely, and upon reviewing the facts, it will become clear why Smartmatic chose to combine with Sequoia in an effort to merge the most secure and successful companies in the international and domestic voting systems markets. Sequoia, a top U.S. firm, is a perfect partner for Smartmatic, a fully independent company with a strong international presence, and now, like so many other American companies with global operations and reach, we are simply striving to be the best in our business," concluded Blaine.
The point here is that Dobbs, and to a much lesser extent, The New York TImes are using Chavez and his government as some sort of bogeyman in an attempt to discredit Sequoia. Now this isn't at all to say that Sequoia should be trusted, rather the question of ownership is mostly irrelevant (as we will more clearly see when we look at the 2004 referendum in Venezuela) and that Dobbs is dishonest. But now let's first look at two reasons why the company really shouldn't be trusted. We turn to Bradblog (which has been doing excellent work on the question of electronic voting machines). This is what Sequoia says about independent testing of its software:
Sequoia's products consist only of voting devices and systems, all of which must be federally and state tested (including a line-by-line review of all software source code)...
But in Bradblog's report we see this claim of federal and state testing is misleading. He discusses Diebold:
...."The equipment has been tested by independent agencies and federal agencies," Diebold's Chief Disinformation Officer, Mark Radke lied to Diane Sawyer in a recent Good Morning America interview on ABC...
To be crystal clear, Radke was simply lying in his statement to Sawyer. He knows damned well that not a single independent body — nobody, none, zero…no computer scientist, security expert or federal, state or local election official or organization — is allowed to test Diebold's voting systems in full and release their findings publicly. The same is true for the systems of every other voting machine company in America.
The only federal testing of these systems is done by the so-called "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA), a consortium of three private corporations chosen and paid for by the voting machine companies themselves. The ITAs test only what their client Voting Machine Companies tell them to test. They do so in secret and without releasing the results of their limited testing publicly....
From another entry, citing someone from Voter Trust USA (originally on a different episode of Dobb's show -ironically)
...But at this hearing in Washington, a clear demonstration of just how cozy manufacturers are with the labs who test their machines. Executives sat elbow to elbow on the same panel and testified together.
Electronic voting machines have proven reliability and security flaws. But the labs who test and certify those machines are actually hired and paid by the manufacturers themselves.
WARREN STEWART, VOTETRUSTUSA: The manufacturers contract directly with the laboratories and pay for the testing that is done. So the manufacturers essentially are the clients of the testing labs.
PILGRIM: Sure enough, testing labs at today's hearing refer to the manufacturers as their clients.
FRANK PADILLA, WYLE LABORATORIES: Independent test labs normally do not release test report data to any other source but the client and who the client directs us to release them to.
PILGRIM: Shouldn't the testing labs be more independent of the manufacturers? The government panel ducked the question.
BRIAN HANCOCK, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMM.: If there are other ways of trying to do that, we would be more than happy to hear from anyone out there that would like to talk to us. Virtually every other governmental program does it that way.
And yesterday Bradblog posted another example that would lead one to at the very least question the reliability of Sequoia's machines.
"Just push the yellow button and you can vote as many times as you want," Tom Courbat, an Election Integrity advocate from Riverside County, California informed The BRAD BLOG tonight. Not that we're in any mood to report more such stories, but this seems to be a big one. A very big one.
It seems there's a little yellow button on the back every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into "Manual Mode" allowing them to cast as many votes as they want....
However, while quite obviously this is a feature you don't want on an electronic voting machine, a paper trail and an audit would almost certainly eliminate the concerns regarding multiple voting.
Now let's get back to Dobbs and Venezuela, and why he is such dismal, irresponsible journalist and a very poor messenger on issues of such importance as the credibility of an electoral system. Additionally, while not only seeing how the Venezuelan referendum of 2004 was legitimate, we will see the significance of paper trails and the why the issue of ownership is overblown. Once again from Sequoia's website:
Smartmatic's electronic voting system with auditable paper trail was used in this election (2004 Venezuelan referendum) and performed exceedingly well. Both the Carter Center and the Organization of American States monitored and audited the election and found that the results and equipment were accurate.
This is why it is the question of paper trials, not ownership that is so critical. But don't, by any means, simply take Sequoia's word for it. We need to look at the referendum itself First though, let's get a wingnut's perspective on it (demonstrating why it still is important to outline the its legitimacy). From a comment thread on Sadly, No:
Gary Ruppert said,
October 29, 2006 at 17:57The fact is that the Democrats will steal the election due to the work of Venezuelan Chavez supporters, such as the ones who own Sequoia. Chavez has a lot of experience in stealing elections too, such as the recall where the exit polls had him down 59/41 and he won 59/41.
Now where could he have got that from? Maybe from Mr. Dobbs and his reporter?
...PILGRIM: Smartmatic's machines were used in Venezuela's controversial 2004 recall election. Many experts say those voting machines were manipulated in Venezuela to give President Hugo Chavez a victory. Exit polls done by a U.S. firm Penn, Showen (ph), and Berlins, had Chavez losing 41 percent to 59 percent, but the next day, Chavez declared victory, reversing the score, saying he won, 59 percent of the vote.
GUSTAVO COLONEL, FMR. VENEZUELAN CONGRESS MEMBER: Everything was computed in favor of the government, so the only explanation is that the Smartmatic machines had been programmed in that way.
PILGRIM: A Harvard mathematician crunched the numbers on the Venezuelan election.
RICARDO HAUSMANN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I think that the preponderance of the evidence is that there was fraud in the election. It had to be the Smartmatic system, all of these machines talk to a central computer and report on their results. And in that mechanism, as they communicate with the center, the central machine can report anything.
First, let's address these "many experts." Simply put Gustavo Coronel is an opposition figure with a long history of presenting lies and misleading claims regarding Chavez. He is not credible. However CNN does not even identify him as an opposition figure but simply a former member of Venezuela's congress.
This is extremely dishonest of Dobbs. Further I can find no mention of Coronel being a former member of congress including at his own website.
Gustavo Coronel is the founder of Agrupacion Pro-Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance) and later an oilman and in 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Römer....[who lost to Chavez btw]
In terms of Hausmann, his unequivocal statement leaves a tremendous amount to be desired. We recall that Dobbs referred to Chavez as a strongman (a strongman can be defined as someone who is a "a political leader who controls by force; dictator.") So let's take a closer look at referendum in Venezuela to see how accurate Dobbs and his so-called authority are. Two days following the referendum there was an independent audit carried out by the Carter group (mentioned above in the Sequoia comment) on 150 of the 4580 polling stations used in the referendum. The Centre for Economic Policy Research, commenting on a study done by this very same Hausmann along with Roberto Rigobón, first conclude on the likelihood of simple ballot stuffing ,given that each voter received a paper copy of their electronically recorded vote and deposited into a ballot box:
The only way the boxes could have been altered would be for the military-historically the custodians of election material in Venezuela-to have reprogrammed 19,200 voting machines to print out new paper receipts with the proper date, time and serial code and in the proper number of Yes and No votes to match the electronic result, and to have reinserted these into the proper ballot boxes. All of this in garrisons spread across 22 states, between Monday and Wednesday, with nobody revealing the fraud. We considered this to be supremely implausible
They note that Hausmann and Rigobón also reject this possibility. This leaves only one other possibility; that the group of audited polling places was taken from a predetermined group of "clean" results, with the fraud occurring in the remainder of polling places (for example coming from a group of 1580 "clean" polling places with the fraud taking place in the remaining 3000). To say this is farfetched is to akin to saying that Bush isn't the most intelligent president in U.S. history. First of all, the source code of the software that selected the 150 polling places to be audited was given to the Carter group and the selection was carried out on live television, making the logistics of such an operation extremely difficult. Nevertheless this is what Hausmann and Rigobón claim. The most damning evidence, however, comes from what the actual result of the audit was, and how it relates statistically to the overall totals. CEPR:
...the authors use a regression analysis to test whether the sample drawn for the audit is truly a random sample. Without going into the mathematics of the model, the authors use a regression to test whether the "Sí" votes in the August 15 signatures gathered for the recall (in November-December 2003) are related differently to the audited sample as compared to how they are related to the overall universe of polling centers. The theory is that if the audited sample is truly a random sample of the polling centers, then the relationship between the signatures and the "Sí" vote count in the audited sample should not be significantly different from that in the rest of the 4580 voting centers.
The authors find that this relationship is significantly different, and interpret this as evidence of fraud.
But there is a very serious problem with this analysis. Let us return to the example offered by Hausmann and Rigobón in their paper, which describes the fraud that their regression model is here attempting to detect. Say there are 3,000 voting centers that are rigged, and 1,580 left "clean" for the CNE and observers to draw their sample from. How is this division to be made, and the sample drawn? Hausmann and Rigobón assume that the both of these selections are drawn randomly. If that is the case, we would expect that the sample would show a very different proportion of YES votes than the total count. In other words, if the real vote was, as Penn, Schoen, Berland & Associates allege,[ed. what the wingnut above cited, a group directly directed to the opposition group of Sumate) -- 59-41 YES, instead of the opposite (59-41) NO, the official count -- then the sample should reflect that.
But it doesn't. Not even close. In fact the audit showed the 'Yes' vote to recall Chavez at 42.26% while the overall official total was 41.60%. CEPR calculated what the odds of the audit differing so much from what Sumate's exit poll claimed. It also calculated what the probability of it differing from a simple "Yes" majority of 50.1%. The corresponding chances are 1 in 28,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and 1 in 1,400,000. Not very likely, don't you think?
Hausmann and Rigobón also cite the Sumate exit poll as evidence of fraud. But this is simply not the least bit reliable. As CEPR note:
These data are not just measured with error but highly implausible. We have no idea how they were gathered or if there was fraud involved in their collection. As such, it is entirely possible that the error term for the exit polls would be correlated with the error term for the signatures. If this is the case, the empirical estimates of the Hausmann and Rigobón model in this section would say nothing about fraud in the election; rather they would simply be a product of how the exit poll data was collected.
Indeed it is highly unusual to be asked to question the results of an election in which so many controls and monitoring procedures were in place, on the basis of implausible exit poll data that was provided (and gathered) by political activists with no verifiable controls or monitoring. Although Hausmann and Rigobón's analysis does not require this data to be accurate, it does require that its errors be uncorrelated with those of the signatures, something that cannot be assumed without any verifiable knowledge or observation of where the data came from. It is also unusual that the authors used only this opposition data, and ignored other exit poll data that more closely predicted the official results of the election. For example, exit polling by the American polling firm Evans/ McDonough Company, Inc. polled 53,045 voters and found a result of 55% NO to 45% YES"
The authors also note two more important factors. One; what if (which Hausmann and Rigobón don't suggest) the audit sample was not random but pre-programmed (despite the obvious difficulties in doing this) from heavy pro-Chavez areas? However if one compares the results of the sample to the results of the 2000 election in the same geopgraphical area we get basically the same figures. The results from the audited centers referrendum show a total of 61.8 percent for Chávez, as opposed to 61.4 percent for the country from from the 2000 election. Secondly, as CEPR note, " every reliable pre-election poll predicted that the recall effort would fail. The most recent and comprehensive polls before the vote predicted the actual margin of victory very closely."
And OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria following the referendum stated (from the Washington Post, 2004)
With this process concluded, we think the results released by the National Elections Council are compatible with the check we have done ... In our opinion, the type of check used in this audit of the electronic system doesn't leave us much doubt regarding the result.
A "preponderance of the evidence" my ass.
Finally, unlike the recent Mexican presidential election, this election was not close making successful fraud infinitely more difficult.
(If anyone wants to go down the road of comparing this referendum with the Mexican election, I can only say I would be happy to point out the vast number of differences. In a nutshell, there was no transparency to the election count in Mexico nor the 9% recount, there was no statistical verification or independent audit, there were numerable irregularities in the vote counting, the publishing of the results and in the recount - at one point millions of votes were not published and then were suddenly 'discovered,' the electoral authorities proved they had access to the computers that compiled the results after the voting had taken place when they 'corrected' some errors in the vote tallies, there was no judicial precedence in the final decision by the electoral court, and so on and so on. Oh, and in terms of conflict of interest, the head of Instituto Federal Electoral was the best man at the winning candidate's wedding. Can you possibly imagine what the uproar would have been if the head of the team of auditors had been Chavez's best man? There is simply no comparison whatsoever between the situation in Venezuela and Mexico)
So let's conclude this then with some basic points
- While independent testing of electronic voting machines certainly would be desirable, what is most required clearly are paper trails, where the voter can see on paper who they voted for and deposit the ballot in a secure ballot box. This way, an independent audit conducted on a random sample will be virtually certain to detect irregularities and/or fraud in the electronic count and the recourse of a manual recount of all paper ballots would be available to determine the actual result of any electoral contest. The ownership of the company is not particularly important if the government mandates paper trails.
- The Venezuelan referendum was legitimate. We know this precisely because there was an independent audit carried out on the paper trial the voting machines provided.
- Despite the noble aims of a fair election and the nonstop questioning of the reliability of the electronic voting machines, Lou Dobbs remains an unqualified hack and CNN remains a dubious source for sound information.
I don't understand... Smartmatic-Sequoia is owned by three Venezuelan nationals thus it's Venezuelan owned correct? Having read the article and Colonel's article as well as other stuff on the web (Vcrisis.com) it's apparent that Smartmatic came into being after juicy contracts from Chavez and that today Chavez remains Smarmatic's largest customer. I don't call the ownership into question, what I see here is conflict of interest, official corruption and an aggresive offshore strategy designed to circumvent US taxes. And you find nothing wrong with this... I could not find anything on Brian Hunter and Venezuela on the Internet so I end up questioning the author's credibility more than Colonel who has extensive web archives and Dobbs who is Dobbs.
I found many of the links above here: http://venezuelatoday.net/sycophants_shills_psfs.html
Interesting that one of the links above claims that Mr Carlos Herera of Vheadline is an impostor. I am not convinced of the veracity of any of my Hunter's claims as the sources he cites and the backing research is weak IMO. A simple Internet search reveals lots more compelling info on the subjects and what I see here is cherrypicking of the info to serve a specific agenda or narrow mindeness.
Posted by: Mitch Davies | November 10, 2006 at 06:24 PM
First whether I appear on your searches or not obviously has nothing to do with the veracity of my argument.
But beyond that, I could easily be an anti-Chavista and make exactly the same argument. The argument has absolutely nothing to do with whether I support Chavez or not. In fact you can not find anything in the article which you could cite that relates to my opinion of the Chavez administration because I never gave it. And if you care to know, my opinion is nuanced, not simply for or against.
Of course in a perfect universe all voting equipment would belong to an independent entity free from influence from any sort. But we don't live in a perfect universe. You can easily do some google searches if you prefer and find that Diebold has many a connection with Republicans. However the point was clearly that the ownership doesn't matter if there is indeed a paper trail (the case in Venezuela) where the voter can verify who they voted for and allow for an independent audit. In fact in the United States this is precisely what voter reform groups demand. They are not demanding that Diebold sell its assets to some conflict of interest free group. They want the paper trail.
(Whether Sequioa's business strategy is to circumvent taxes may very well be the case.That is an entirely different issue. I make it quite clear that, alone, I would not trust any private company - including Sequioa - to supply equipment for any election without a verifiable paper trail)
In terms of Lou Dobbs, I attack him because he simply misleads his viewers by contradicting basic facts and/or ignoring conclusions from independent sources in order to advance his agenda; that is Chavez is a dictator and the ownership of the company which supplies the voting machines is a problem. (In terms of Colonel, well let's just say I'm not very impressed with his logic or his manipulation of data ... on a host of issues)
You have absolutely failed in any respect to confront my position. If there are arguments you have which contradict my fairly straightforward conclusions I would be happy to hear them. First, and most importantly, you would need to explain how - with the paper trails and audit - one could possibly fix an election.
Posted by: brian | November 10, 2006 at 10:24 PM