Fwd: CALIFORNIANS PLEASE READ: Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

[Guest guest]

Californians -- Monday will every one of you please call your representative

and senators, Schwarzenegger and our Secretary of State to tell them this is

unacceptable. Anyone or the family of anyone who has worked for any of the

voting machines, who has held a position in any of the companies, who has

contracted or sub-contracted for them should be allowed to even be present at

the elections except to vote. They should not have access to the equipment,

period. It's bad enough we even have the UNCERTIFIED equipment in some

counties. You might want to remind them that to ignore the public/us once we

have contacted them if there should be a problem could be considered criminal

fraud, extreme negligence, and a distinct and troubling pattern of failure to

uphold the public trust both in violations of the spirit which so crucially

represents the public interest. If you send an email also (suggested) send a

copy to yourself also and keep it in a file to show you contacted them BEFORE

elections and told them to correct this problem.

 

Read the article below the contact numbers...this is hard to believe. If we

call enough and there is enough outrage, perhaps they will think twice about it.

So please call and send this on to anyone you know in CA. Thanks, Sharin

 

Dianne Feinstein:

 

DC office: 202/224-3841

 

San Francisco office: 415/393-0707

 

Los Angeles Office: 310/914-7300

 

San Diego Office: 619/231-9712

 

Fresno Office: 559/485-7430

 

FAX: 202/224-3841

 

email form: http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html

 

 

Barbara Boxer:

 

DC office: 202/224-3553

 

Sacramento office: 916/448-2787 fax: 916/448-2563

 

San Francisco office 415/403-0100 fax: 415/956-6701

 

Los Angeles office: 213/894-5000 fax: 213/894-5042

 

Fresno office: 559/497-5109 fax: 559/497-5111

 

San Diego office: 619/239-3884 fax: 619/239-5719

 

Inland Empire: 909/888-8525 fax: 909/888-8613

 

email address: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

 

 

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley:

 

916/657-2166

 

fax 916/653-3214

 

email: elections

 

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

 

email: info

 

I can't find a phone number if you can believe that.

 

Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

 

 

 

By Kim Zetter | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

 

 

 

02:00 AM Sep. 30, 2004 PT

 

An influential employee of voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems left

the company recently to take a job as elections manager for a California county.

 

Deborah Seiler, a sales representative for the beleaguered voting company, was

hired a week ago and started Monday in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco

in California's wine country. The position puts her second in command of

elections in the county, under the registrar of voters.

 

The move raises eyebrows because Seiler played a role in a recent scandal

involving Diebold and the county. As the Diebold sales rep, Seiler sold Solano

County nearly 1,200 touch-screen machines that were not federally tested or

state certified. When the state banned the machines because of Diebold's

business practices, the county had to find a replacement for the machines and

pay Diebold more than $400,000 to get out of its contract.

 

" This is outrageous. This is just a total runaround of the democratic process, "

said Douglas MacDonald, of the Community Labor Alliance, an activist group that

pressured Solano County to end its contract with Diebold. " There was an open

debate and discussion, and the county (supervisors) decided that Diebold is not

the company, is not the philosophy, that we want behind the running of elections

in Solano County. Then what happens? They go out and hire the person who was

advocating that philosophy. "

 

But Ira Rosenthal, Solano County's registrar of voters and chief information

officer, defended the hire, saying that Seiler was the best-qualified candidate

for the job. She had been California's chief elections official in the mid-1980s

before taking the job with Diebold.

 

" We have to look at the track record of the person and what she knows, "

Rosenthal said. " We had a very successful election in the March primary (with

the Diebold machines). We had not one issue. She was instrumental in helping us

get that off the ground. "

 

Rosenthal said only four candidates applied for the job, which became available

in May, and three of them were employees of voting machine companies. He

declined to name the other companies.

 

California and other states have had a history of revolving doors between

election offices and voting vendors. Voting companies hire election officials as

sales representatives and consultants to take advantage of their connections and

camaraderie with other election officials in order to gain advantage over

competitors bidding for multimillion-dollar contracts. Some voters have voiced

concerns about the conflicts of interest.

 

Seiler's move is a rare one, however -- an election official who left state

employment to go work for a voting company, then came back to elections.

 

Before taking the job with Diebold, Seiler was California's chief of elections

in the secretary of state's office for 12 years. She was heavily involved in

election legislation, consulting with the state assembly committee on election

legislation, and played a large role in crafting the state's election code,

according to Rosenthal. In 1991, she quit her job in the secretary of state's

office and went to work for the elections industry, working eight years for

Sequoia Voting Systems, a competitor of Diebold, before moving to Diebold.

 

" If somebody knows elections in California, it's her, " Rosenthal said. " She

fills this gap in experience in our department. "

 

Kim Alexander, founder and president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan California

Voter Foundation, said, " There's no doubt that Deborah Seiler is one of the most

experienced in California elections. But I find it confusing that the county

would hire someone who played a role in their acquisition of uncertified

equipment. "

 

Solano County canceled its $4.1 million contract with Diebold in April,

following a series of hearings in which the secretary of state's office revealed

that Diebold had installed uncertified software on machines in 17 California

counties, violating state election laws. The state also accused the company of

misleading state officials about certification issues.

 

Solano had purchased and already taken delivery of Diebold's new AccuVote-TSx

touch-screen voting machines last year, with the understanding that the system

had been federally tested and was about to be state certified.

 

According to news reports at the time, Seiler assured Solano supervisors last

November that Diebold's machines had already received certification, though she

was unable to produce a copy of the letter verifying that.

 

" There is no doubt on the certification of this equipment, " Seiler was quoted in

a local paper.

 

Seiler did not respond to a request for comment.

 

But the system hadn't been certified and when state officials learned that the

system they were planning to certify was not exactly the same system Diebold had

submitted to federal testing labs, they canceled plans to certify the system.

 

The state then prohibited Solano and three other counties from using the TSx

machines, forcing them to find another system only a few months before the

presidential elections. The state's attorney general is currently pursuing a

false claims suit against Diebold alleging the company aggressively marketed a

system it knew was not tested or approved by federal authorities.

 

After the scandal erupted, Diebold attempted to keep Solano as a customer,

promising to outfit the county for November with free optical-scan machines that

were certified, with the option of keeping the machines after the election or

switching back to touch-screen machines once they were certified.

 

But county supervisors rejected the offer, even though it would cost them to

terminate the Diebold contract, citing concerns about Diebold's business

practices and voter confidence. Registrar of voters Laura Winslow, who had been

a staunch supporter of Diebold and the touch-screen machines, resigned after the

state's ban on the machines.

 

Solano County Supervisor John Silva, who only learned of the hiring Tuesday

after Seiler started work, said he wouldn't comment on internal election

department hiring. Fellow Supervisor Barbara Kondylis didn't return calls for

comment, but she told a local paper she heard about the hiring only from another

employee.

 

" I am so angry, " she told the Fairfield Daily Republic. " And it's done without

telling us. " She said that although Seiler's qualifications were " excellent, "

she was concerned how voters would view the hiring.

 

Voting activist MacDonald was clear on how he felt about it.

 

" We spent seven months working to get Diebold out of Solano, now they've come in

the back door, " he said. " We need someone who is as open and forthcoming as

possible running our elections, and that's the exact opposite of the corporate

culture she's coming from. The veil that we worked so hard to take down, is now

sliding back in. "

 

To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics

section.

 

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65120,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

 

 

 

http://pets.care2.com/

 

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