D.C. Council Special Committee Asks Judge to Enforce (Sequoia) Subpoena

[Wilms]

D.C. Council Special Committee Asks Judge to Enforce Subpoena

April 24, 2009

A special D.C. Council committee investigating widespread errors in two primary elections last year asked a D.C. Superior Court judge yesterday to enforce a subpoena against the company that provides voting machines to the District.

Lawyers from Jenner & Block and Hunton & Williams, who are representing the committee, argue that Sequoia Voting Systems voting machines failed during primary elections held on Feb. 12 and Sept. 9, and source code and other voting materials will show whether “sleeper glitches” are to blame for “glaring errors.” One of the errors mentioned in court filings are election returns that showed nearly 4,759 votes were cast in the Sept. 9 primary election in Precinct 141 even though the precinct has only 2,388 registered voters.

Lorelie Masters, a partner at Jenner & Block representing the special committee, tells the BLT that similar errors were replicated in several other precincts. She adds that outside of Sequoia's software failing, "there's no logical explanation for how these anomalies occurred."

On Sept. 18, the special committee slapped Sequoia with a subpoena to obtain documents and other materials, including the source code data. Sequoia, which has provided voting materials and machines to the District for over 20 years, has so far refused to comply with the subpoena, saying that the materials either aren’t relevant or are proprietary.

~snip~

The company has argued previously that the fault lies not with its software or equipment, but on “some type of electrical or static discharge that might have taken place.”

~snip~

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/04/dc-council-special-committee-asks-judge-to-enforce-subpoena.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. Kick. nt

[Stevepol]

2. Mucho recommendo! K&R!!

[Peace Patriot]

3. I hope this D.C. Council sticks to its guns, but the story of the 'TRADE SECRET' code

in our voting machines, thus far, is a tale of the collusion of our Democratic Party leaders in, first of all, voting for 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines with absolutely no audit/recount controls--code owned and controlled by a handful of Bushwhack corporations including Sequoia--and, secondly, deep-sixing the first case against the 'TRADE SECRET' code, that of Christine Jennings in FL-13 in 2006. There, ES&S machines disappeared 18,000 votes in Democratic areas, in an election that the Puke 'won' by only about 350 votes. When Jennings' lawyers took the matter to court, and asked to review ES&S's 'TRADE SECRET' code, to find out what happened to those 18,000 votes, ES&S refused, and argued that their right to profit from our elections with their 'TRADE SECRET' code trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted, even in a highly smelly vote count like FL-13--and the judge agreed with ES&S! Our right to vote ended that day--because our right to vote does not exist without the right to SEE the votes counted in the public venue. But the story doesn't end there. Jennings took the matter to Congress--the final arbiter of Congressional seats--and there the new Democratic majority buried it deep, never to be heard from again.

ES&S, brethren to Diebold (similar computer architecture; both at one time run by two rightwing brothers) has as its initial funder and major investor, the far rightwing billionaire recluse, Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Although it's hard to pick which is the evilist of the Big Three election theft corporations, ES&S would probably get my vote. They manufacture their touchscreen voting machines in sweatshops in the Philippines! How's that for fascism--even our voting system in outsourced! (See Dan Rather's "The Trouble with Touchscreens," at www.HD.net.)

ES&S's spinoff corporation--Diebold (now called "Premier")--had, as CEO during the 2004 election, Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised, in writing, to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004." And how's that for the kind of people running our elections with 'TRADE SECRET' code? The bad guys at Diebold and ES&S are rather obvious. However, Sequoia also has Puke connections. They hired former CA Sec of State, Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines, after Jones brought the curse of unverifiable elections to California--in a rather spectacular case of "revolving door employment." So, all three of the Puke corporations running our elections with 'TRADE SECRET' code, that we are not permitted to review, have a partisan interest in Pukes winning elections. And our Democratic Party leadership has done NOTHING about this, and in fact has encouraged it from the beginning, and covered up FL-13 (and a lot else) to protect these fuckwad corporations. Fear? Intimidation? Bullying? Spying dossiers on them? Collusion? Who knows?

So, IF the D.C. Council sticks to its guns, they will be doing so in the teeth of our own Party establishment, which apparently likes 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting controlled by Pukes and Bushwhacks and extremist 'christian' billionaires.