This is bizarre.
You may not know that the Sequoia Voting Systems company was sold in March (for a song, $16 million) to a Venezuelan-owned company -- Smartmatic. The new US headquarters is in Boca Raton. DeLaRue, the former owner, just cashed out of Sequoia at a loss.
And stranger still, last week our government denied permission for Sequoia's new CEO Antonio Mujica to return to the US.
Our embassy in Venezuela has revoked his visa. (Presumably, the company's president Jack Blaine is still allowed on US soil.)
So, it seems the supplier of US voting machines (one of the three largest makers) is being run by a man who the US doesn't trust to enter the country!
What can we make of this?
The info comes from
a press release of votetrustusa.org (a great site for info, btw).
| By John Gideon and Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA
October 17, 2005
On October 14, 2005, Antonio Mujica, CEO of Smartmatic, was refused entry into the United States. His Visa was revoked by the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela. See vcrisis.com.
Ten months ago, Smartmatic, a Venezuelan-owned company, purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. for $16 million (U.S.). Sequoia Voting Systems is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic voting systems purchased in the United States. Public access to the company's vote-counting software is prohibited by trade secret laws.
VotersUnite.Org's Information Manager, John Gideon said, "The irony of this situation shows how irrational the administration of elections in the U.S. has become. While U.S. law allows this Venezuelan man to control the secret counting of Americans' votes, the U.S. State Department doesn't consider him fit to enter the country, even temporarily."
The organization's Executive Director, Ellen Theisen, added, "It's also ironic that when we take vote-counting to Iraq, we take it in the form of paper ballots deposited into clear plastic ballot boxes, but in our own country, vote-counting is in the form of electronic ballots and secret software controlled by a man our government has declared ineligible to set foot in the country." |
There's an interesting juxtaposition too of Sequoia's CEO being kept out of this country, and terrorist Luis Carriles Posada is kept in, and not deported to Venezuela for trial — this by way of a ruling in Posada's case last month by an El Paso immigration judge from DHS.
Things seem pretty twisted now in this freedom-loving law and order democracy of ours.
Oh, fyi, Sequoia has begun to add paper rolls to some of its machines to function as a reassuring echo of what you punched into an electronic display. However, the rolls are not designed for routine counting. Instead, it is the data signals that are received electronically and then transmitted electronically that get counted. If the rolls are not for counting, then I view their use for potential spot checks as only a salve, not an election solution.
These devices were in place in Nevada last year. But the SoS denied a recount to candidate Cobb by posting a prohibitive price for a count, $346,000.
Who's afraid of a paper ballot?
Update - See kudos' comment below, he believes Smartmatic rigged Venezuela's referendum on deposing/re-electing Hugo Chavez, and that's why the Dept of State is keeping him out now. kudos says he believes Sequoia's ownership company rigs votes.