By way of disclosure, I am a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, requesting that he take a closer look at Pennsylvania's unverifiable computerized voting machines, including the ones purchased by my county from Advanced Voting Systems. The law suit was not my first choice; it was simply where I ended up after all other legal means were exhausted. The Secretary of State, is incommunicado in his bunker in Harrisburg, while in Northampton County, I receive each new fact which challenges the trustworthiness of my county's voting machines with shocked incredulity, tempered by increasing cynicism.
Was it not bad enough that my county's voting machines were uncertified in the May and November 2006 elections (what's a little uncertification among friends)? Was it not bad enough that the Secretary of State used a decertified testing lab (CIBER) to "certify" my county's uncertified machines, just in the nick of time before the May 2007 primary? Now I learn that my county has no recourse against these vendors, who may have sold it a fraudulent bill of goods.
I went to my county elections office to review Northampton County's contract with Advanced Voting Systems, makers of WINvote voting software and the voting computers which run it. After poring over the contract, and speaking with the county solicitor, I discovered that there is no recourse against defects in the voting equipment. For AVS, there is no requirement for certification or for accuracy. AVS does not stand behind its product for system failure of any kind. In essence, the purchase is "as is, with all faults".
My county spent over 2 million taxpayer dollars on this equipment which uniquely determines all election results for its quarter-million residents. There is no independent verification for these touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE)'s. There is no way to audit their accuracy. Even if the voting machines were found to be inaccurate (not that anyone could ever know for certain) the county cannot go after the vendor or manufacturer for corrective action or financial satisfaction. Shame on us for being the fools. Caveat emptor.
Not surprisingly, AVS's behavior is fairly typical for the voting machine industry. Paul Lehto, an election integrity attorney, offers the following analysis:
http://electionfraudnews.com/...
An excerpt:
Legal Discussion for the Layperson
Implied warranties are part of contracts for sales of goods automatically, and
require that the goods be fit for their normal use or any particular use the seller has reason
to know of. Voting machine vendors, by having contracts that disclaim these implied
warranties in a way equivalent to an "as is, and with all faults" are specifically telling us
that they DO NOT PROMISE THAT THE GOODS WILL BE FIT FOR THEIR
NORMAL USE, i.e. that they will work in a general sense. This occurs whenever
vendors, as they commonly do, disclaim the implied warranties that are part of every
contract for the sale of goods as a matter of law (i.e. automatically).
Because contracts for the purchase of voting machines are "sales of goods" they
are subject to the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") as adopted in all 50 states except
Louisiana, regardless of whether the goods are for business, government or consumer
use. Under the UCC, "Implied warranties" are automatically added by law to every
verbal or written contract for the sale of goods, and they are (1) the "implied warranty of
merchantability," and (2) wherever the seller has reason to know a particular purpose of
the buyer, the "implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose" also arises. As will
be evident from the meanings of these warranties, the reason they are implied into every
transaction for the sale of goods is that a rational buyer would not usually contract to
purchase without them. Implied warranties are defined at UCC 2-314 which is located
here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/...
In other words, the company that sold my county its voting machines is not upholding the same minimum contractual standard as a used car dealer. Hmmmm.
Brad Spencer, a former elections worker in Fairfax County, Virginia, another county which uses WINvote, alerted other AVS customers that the hardware used in the voting machines was completely different than the hardware which was originally certified. There is photographic evidence to show this- certainly enough evidence to raise suspicions.
What was AVS's response to my county's request that they be shown that the purchased hardware is indeed the same as what the Secretary of State inspected and certified? AVS insists that the county got what was promised and has threatened to void its obligations to support its machines if the county tries to inspect them.
In summary, my county cannot examine the machines that it purchased from AVS, because that would be a violation of its contract, but the county has no contractual recourse if the machines are uncertified, inaccurate or if they fail in any way. How can these vendors stay in business?