NY: Voting Machine Contract Gets Justice Dept. Review

[Wilms]

NY: Voting Machine Contract Gets Justice Dept. Review

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer

September 16, 2010

snip

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating the awarding of a $50 million contract by New York City in January to Election Systems & Software, according to sources familiar with the probe. The company provided voting machines used in Tuesday's elections in New York City and the District. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, because it is unclear whether any charges will be filed.

snip

One subject of the criminal investigation, sources said, is Anthony Mangone, a New York lawyer who was indicted in January on racketeering and other, unrelated federal charges stemming from real estate projects in Yonkers, N.Y.

Mangone was a lobbyist for ES&S throughout 2009, the period in which it was seeking the $50 million voting machine contract from New York City, lobbying records show.

snip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091601936.html

[Stevepol]

1. These voting machine vendors are crooked as the day is long.

I think ES&S is even more crooked than Diebold (now Premier). Nothing reported about them surprises me.

[Bill Bored]

3. Premier is now Dominion (also Sequoia, Smartmatic & Hugo Chavez). Their e-pollbook biz went to ES&S.

This was done in the name of "competition" so ES&S wouldn't get the whole pie.

[Stevepol]

2. Oops. A dupe.

[Bill Bored]

4. There's more to this story...

...the NYC contract was awarded based on a "points" system.

ES&S proposed some illegal options, such as NOT requiring passwords to activate their scanners, in order to get more points from the NYC Board of Elections (who apparently don't give a flying #@¢& about voting system security, or just don't have the manpower to enforce it).

Is that what tipped the balance in favor of ES&S? Let's see if the DoJ can find out.

So far, the only thing they've done for New York under Bush or Obama is to sue the state to require us to replace lever voting machines with vote-switching computers. Now they expect us to have honest elections and no bid-rigging?:wtf: