Venezuelan Interest In U.S. Voting Software

A number of readers wrote in about a U.S. federal investigation into the Venezulean ownership of Sequoia Voting Systems, which makes voting machines used in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States wonders whether the anti-U.S. government of Hugo Chávez could be trying to influence the U.S. midterm elections. From the article: "Government officials familiar with the Smartmatic inquiry said they doubted that even if the Chávez government was some kind of secret partner in the company, it would try to influence elections in the United States. But some of them speculated that the purchase of Sequoia could help Smartmatic sell its products in Latin America and other developing countries, where safeguards against fraud are weaker."

Comments

Oh fucking please

[theolein]

Chavez might be a populist loudmouth fucker, but he is pretty open about what he wants and what his intentions are, not like the current crop of corrupt, deceiptful pigs running the USA, who resort to vague accusations like this one in times of elections because they finally realised that they fucked up across the board and that people really hate them for it.

Re:Oh fucking please

[h4rm0ny]

You've ignored the possibility that Chavez actually despises the actions of the Bush regime and genuinely would like to see a better US foreign policy.

Not everyone is solely interested in power.

Re:Oh fucking please

[doom]

Anonymous wrote:

Bullshit! If you can read Spanish, I suggest you read his statements about what is going on in his country. Read how he has increased security (increased murders to 10,000 per year in a country of 25 million), provided money and hospitals for the poor (while increasing the poverty rate even while reaping record oil profits), improved the economy (which has >10% inflation and small growth even while reaping record oil profits), and has increased personal freedom (by introducing communist style price controls and jailing reporters).

Wow... and all of those accusations have occured in the local Venezuelan press? That's pretty cool, considering we've got US pundits trying to claim that Chavez is censoring the press.

I don't know much about it myself, but one of those silly leftist writers, Tariq Ali, is going around saying things like this about Chavez:

And what people do not seem to understand, within the establishment in the United States and its state media hacks, is that you can have political leaders today in parts of the world who are extremely popular because they give the people what they promised to give them. And politics elsewhere has become so isolated and alienating from the population that people just don't expect this anymore. And I think this is what explains the popularity of Chavez. And, of course, using oil money to push through mega-spending on health, on education, on building homes for the poor, free universities for the poor, this is not permitted in this world. He does it, and at the same time he challenges U.S. foreign policy in a very sharp way.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"where safeguards against fraud are weaker"

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Only in America

[phleb3]

I think that the real problem is that Venezuela is in the doghouse of Bush and Company. Diebold which is held by a right wing company is not subjected to this scrutiny.

Re:Only in America

[bigmammoth]

Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc said in 2003 he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." from numerous reports including democracy now If you accept traditional definitions of left-right and that Bush is to the right then I think it would be fair to say that Diebold is a right wing company only with that piece of information.

If we were to further research the matter I think we would quickly discover that the top of most corporate hierarchy's are right leaning in that they represent the interest of concentrated power outside democratic control. Self interest/self preservation make corporations lean to the right by what I would consider traditional definitions of right and left, but maybe your running on different metaphors and or language syntax.

Re:Only in America

[Potatomasher]

"That guy is republican, so he must be evil !"
"He's a left-wing hippy pot-smoking democrat !"
God when will you people stop with the partisanship, and start focusing on the issues which actually matter !
Face it, there's morons on both sides of the fence. Politics is not an epic battle between the forces of good and evil ! It would be easier for things to be so clear cut, but in reality life is a million different shades of gray.

So when you vote in november, just try to elect the person who seems to make the most sense and represents what you stand for as a human being, AFTER having heard their ideas/platforms/etc. And heck, if both turn out to be the wrong choice for you, vote independent ! Its only a wasted vote if you don't show up !

Hold on a second

[Black Parrot]

Let's take care of the known threats to fair elections at home before we get too wrapped up in hypothetical foreign conspiracies.

Though a move to open systems would help with either.

What about investigating Diebold?

[angryflute]

Why won't the U.S. government investigate Diebold as well?

Implicit Admission of Inherent Security Flaws?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought these electronic voting machines are supposed to be secure - so noone involved in their deployment could 'influence' elections even if they wanted to? If this isn't the case (which this investigation seems to imply), then why only focus on one particular party involved in the production of these machines instead of all who are involved?

Funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

...how people cheating on their wives are the one that are the most afraid that their wives cheat on them...

Re:Election fixing

[God of Lemmings]

Fix his own elections? Its entirely likely that he already has.

[url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Voting_S ystems]

I suspect that he realizes that George has done the same here,
and is basically doing the same to get George out, because he
believes George to be the Devil, or at least a reasonable facimile.

These machines have the same problems as Diebold, and a few of their own.

DRE, just like the Accuvote machines, small difficult to read typeface, and so on.
[url:www.votersunite.org/info/CorrectingSequoia.pd f]

All the noise going on here about it could be motivated by "certain interested parties",
to do a number of things, such as:

distract the public towards a different manufacturer, taking the pressure off of Diebold,

Throw more bad press at Chavez,

and attack the Sequoia machines because they present a perceived threat to their regional
control given by Diebold and other voting machines.

Re:Ridiculous

[robertaas]

Venezuelans are indeed Americans. On which continent did you think Venezuela is located?