Sequoia Voting Systems
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Sequoia Voting Systems is a company based in California, and one of the largest providers of electronic voting systems in the US. Some of its main competitors are Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and Election Systems & Software. Sequoia Voting Systems introduced the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in the US.
Sequoia has been involved with voting systems for more than 100 years, having invented, at the end of the 19th century, the voting lever machines that are still used today in some US jurisdictions. This firm is part of the Smartmatic family since March 8, 2005, when it was acquired. Three Venezuelan engineers, Antonio Mugica, Alfredo Anzola and Roger Piñate founded this company during the late 1990s, in order to provide comprehensive infrastructure for a successful implementation and management of device-networking applications, in both electoral and security branches.
Smartmatic products have achieved international acknowledgment from leading organizations in the world of technology, such as Microsoft's "Top-five packaged application partner of the year" in 2005 and the "Industry finest" award, from the Securities Industry Association's. One of their vertical solutions is an extremely advanced voting system called SAES.
It claims to have the only fully secure and fully auditable voting technology in the world today. Some controversy has been brought onto them as their technology was used in a recall referendum for president Hugo Chavez in 2004. Chavez won by a healthy margin and the opposition cried fraud. However, reports of the OAS, the EU and the Carter Center validated the results after multiple audits.[1][2][3]
On August 3, 2007, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen withdrew approval and granted conditional reapproval to Sequoia Voting Systems optical scan and DRE voting machines after a "top-to-bottom review of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007."[4]
In a 2007 investigative report by Dan Rather, Sequoia Voting Systems was implicated, by former employees, in a plot to push electronic voting machines by intentionally manufacturing poor quality paper ballots destined for West Palm Beach, FL in the 2000 presidential election. Former employees stated that the paper and manufacturing process for just the ballots destined for West Palm Beach were outside of normal specifications which caused all of the hanging chads and recount problems. The companies pressmen and quality control departments refused to sign off on the defective ballots forcing the plant manager to personally force the ballots through the manufacturing process.[5]
The New York Times reports that Florida is scheduled to replace all of its touch-screen-based voting machines by July 1, 2008, and that Sequoia has offered to buy them back for $1. However this offer has been refused.[6]
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[edit] References
- ^ http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/2021.pdf Carter Center Report
- ^ http://www.sap.oas.org/MOE/2003/venezuela/inf_08_15_04_spa.pdf OAS Report
- ^ http://www.eueomvenezuela.org/final_report.htm 2005 Venezuelan Parliamentary Elections
- ^ Withdrawal of Approval of Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc., WinEDS v 3.1.012/AVC Edge/Insight/Optech 400-C DRE & Optical Scan Voting System and Conditional Re-approval of Use of Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc., WinEDS v 3.1.012/AVC Edge/Insight/Optech 400-C DRE & Optical Scan Voting System. California Secretary of State (2007-08-03). Retrieved on 2007-08-15.
- ^ Kim Zetter (2007-08-20). Vendors - Sequoia Voting Systems Responsible for 2000 Presidential Debacle? (English). VoteTrustUSA.
- ^ Voting Machines Giving Florida New Headache, New York Times, 10/13/2007
