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

[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.

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.