The Verifier — Polling Place Equipment 2006-2020
The Verifier is the most comprehensive public data set on voting equipment usage in the U.S. It tracks the type of equipment being used in every state
https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020
2012
Election Day is dominated by a handful of secretive, Partisan corporations with interlocking ownership
Mergers and acquisitions have centralized control of the voting-machine industry since the 1990s, with top executives circulating between the handful of companies that remain. Two brothers in particular, Bob and Todd Urosevich, have led several of the firms. Only antitrust intervention by the Department of Justice has prevented further consolidation.
Mergers and acquisitions have centralized control of the voting-machine industry since the 1990s, with top executives circulating between the handful of companies that remain. Two brothers in particular, Bob and Todd Urosevich, have led several of the firms. Only antitrust intervention by the Department of Justice has prevented further consolidation.
The sheer unreliability of this new technology is only half the problem. The other half is a series of mergers and acquisitions that have further centralized the voting-machine industry over the past decade or so. Election Day is now dominated by a handful of secretive corporations with interlocking ownership, strong partisan ties to the far right, and executives who revolve among them like beans in a shell game.
Bob and Todd Urosevich are hardly household names. Yet the two brothers have succeeded in monopolizing American election technology for decades through a pair of supposedly competing corporations: the Ohio-based Diebold and the Nebraska-based ES&S. The latter was founded by the Urosevich brothers in 1979 and is headquartered in Omaha, where it has an Ayn Rand–flavored corporate address on John Galt Boulevard. It is also, let us recall, the same company that may have won Chuck Hagel his Senate seat.
Diebold became the most infamous name in the industry in 2003, when its CEO, Walden O’Dell, a top fund-raiser for George W. Bush, made a jaw-dropping public promise to “deliver” Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush. The following year, California banned Diebold’s touchscreen system, and Secretary of State Kevin Shelley blasted the company as “fraudulent,” “despicable,” and “deceitful.” O’Dell stepped down in 2005, right before the filing of a class-action suit that accused Diebold of fraud, insider trading, and slipshod quality control.
“Two brothers have monopolized American election technology for decades through a pair of supposedly competing corporations.
Concerned about its tarnished brand, the company removed its label from the front of voting machines. Then Diebold went one step further and changed the name of its voting-machine division to Premier Election Solutions.
In 2009, Diebold, which makes ATMs and other security systems, got out of the elections business altogether, selling Premier to ES&S. Here was a windfall for the Urosevich brothers in more than one sense: Bob had decamped to Diebold in 2002, when the company bought Global Election Systems, where he then served as president. Todd, meanwhile, remained at ES&S. This cozy arrangement was disrupted by a Justice Department antitrust intervention, which forced ES&S to split ownership of Premier with Dominion, the next big name in election technology. A month later, the deck was shuffled once again with Dominion’s purchase of Sequoia.[1]
Between them, Dominion and ES&S now count the majority of American ballots. There are, of course, newer technologies in development, including Web-based voting. This latest innovation is being peddled by the Spanish-owned Scytl, which named Bob Urosevich managing director of its Americas division in 2006.
[1] At the time of the purchase, Dominion absorbed some key staffers from Sequoia, among them Edwin B. Smith, who now serves as Dominion’s vice president of certification and compliance. In 2008, Smith threatened legal action against two computer scientists hired by an association of New Jersey election clerks to examine malfunctioning Sequoia touchscreen machines. The following year, in a farcical conflict of interest, he was appointed to the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee, which helps determine which specific voting machines should be certified for use.
https://www.electiondefense.org/how-to-part-seven
2012
Voting Machine Companies Employ Convicted White Collar Criminals — National Election Defense Coalition
One would think (or hope) that a private industry entrusted with America’s votes would require the highest degree of personal integrity from its employees. As it happens, many of the key staffers behind our major voting-machine companies have been accused or convicted of a dizzying array of white-collar crimes, including conspiracy, bribery, bid rigging, computer fraud, tax fraud, stock fraud, mail fraud, extortion, and drug trafficking.
In 2001, for example, a grand jury indicted Philip Foster, Sequoia’s southern regional sales manager, for malfeasance and conspiring to launder money. During the previous decade, he had facilitated a kickback scheme that funneled payments to a Louisiana elections official, who purchased Sequoia equipment while winking at millions of dollars in overcharges. The scheme, which also involved Foster’s brother-in-law and fellow Sequoia employee David Philpot, was hardly an advertisement for the company. Yet Foster, who gained immunity for his testimony against the elections official, not only avoided jail time but was promoted to vice president of sales administration and strategies at Sequoia.
One high achiever actually got his start in prison. Jeffrey Dean’s vote-by-mail software—developed while Dean was serving a sentence for twenty-three counts of embezzlement—came to dominate the U.S. absentee-voting market. Once out of prison, Dean launched his own ballot-printing company with narcotics trafficker John Elder. They later sold it to Global Election Systems, where, readers will recall, Bob Urosevich served as president and COO, before the company was sold to Diebold.
This leads us to a crazy-making realization. Although many felons (and prior felons) can’t cast a ballot in America—an estimated 6 million citizens will be disenfranchised in 2012 due to felony convictions—these particular felons are apparently free to design and manage our entire elections industry.
electiondefense.org
https://www.electiondefense.org/how-to-part-eight
Associated Press
Security
12.17.2003
Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary
Diebold, already in hot water for the management of its electronic voting machines, takes more flak for having some ex-cons in management positions at a subsidiary.
SAN FRANCISCO – At least five convicted felons secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software.
Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.
The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.
According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."
"You can't tell me these people passed background tests," Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, said in a phone interview.
Diebold spokesman Michael Jacobsen emphasized that the company performs background checks on all managers and programmers. He said many GES managers including Dean left at the time of the acquisition.
"We can't speak for the hiring process of a company before we acquired it," Jacobsen said. He would not provide further details, saying company policy bars discussion of current or past employees.
The former GES is Diebold's wholly owned subsidiary, Global Election Management Systems, which produces the operating system that touch-screen voting terminals use.
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Dean could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) announced a bill last week that would require stringent background checks on all electronic voting company employees who work with voting software. The bill, which Boxer plans to introduce in January, would toughen security standards for voting software and hardware, and require touch-screen terminals to include printers and produce paper backups of vote counts by the 2004 presidential election in November.
Harris and Andy Stephenson, a Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Washington, conducted a 10-day investigation in Seattle and Vancouver, where the men were convicted. Harris and Stephenson released the findings in a 17-page document online and at a news conference in Seattle.
Also Tuesday, Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed announced legislation that would require electronic voting machines in the state to produce a paper trail. If the legislature approves it, touch-screen machines in the state would be required to produce paper receipts by 2006.
Voters would get to see but not touch or remove the receipts, which would be kept in a county lock box. Computer programmers say software bugs, hackers or electrical failures could cause more than 50,000 touch-screen machines used in precincts nationwide to delete or alter votes. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said last month that touch-screens in the nation's most populous state must provide paper receipts by 2006.
https://www.wired.com/2003/12/con-job-at-diebold-subsidiary/
Excerpt
Election Pros Are Cons | Seattle Weekly
Monday, October 9, 2006
by George Howland Jr.
Sophisticated Theft
In 1990, Dean was convicted of first-degree theft in King County for 23 counts of embezzlement of more than $385,000 from a law firm, where he was “a computer systems and accountant consultant,” according to Superior Court records. Dean’s thefts at the law firm, the records state, “occurred over a 21/2 -year period of time . . . The crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized accounting system that defendant maintained for the victim. . . . ” Dean served just under four years for his crime and was released in 1995. His sentence spelled out the following condition: “Defendant shall be required to notify anyone for whom he works either as an employee or an independent contractor of his convictions. . . . “
Before his release, Dean told prison officials he had secured employment with Postal Services of Washington, in Seattle, which today is known as PSI. For years, the company has sorted and aggregated mail for clients, including ballots for King County Records and Elections.
Dean next shows up in the public record later in 1995, as the general manager for Spectrum Print and Mail Services in Mountlake Terrace, which was founded by his wife three years earlier. In 1998, Spectrum won the contract to print ballots for King County’s new optical-scan voting system, which is in use today. By 1999, Dean was also the point man for implementation of a new software system to manage voter registration in King County.
At the time, Larry Alcantara was the director of King County Records and Elections and worked with Dean on both the new ballots and the new voter-registration system. Now retired, Alcantara had no knowledge of Dean’s criminal history. “I’m shocked,” he says. “I can understand folks being concerned. I am concerned.”
Says voter advocate Harris, who has repeatedly warned about lax security in and oversight of new voting systems that depend on computer software: “I hate to be hard-nosed about this, but my worst fears were realized.” She thinks it was completely inappropriate for Dean, a man with a history of computer-related crimes, to play a key role in the development of something as sensitive as voter-registration software. That’s why she contends King County is a prime offender when it comes to lax election security. “Do we have people with inside access that shouldn’t have it? Yes!”
https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/election-pros-are-cons/
Fraction Magic: Detailed Vote Rigging, the one variable they can not predict is voter turnout.
Commissioner Bennie Smith was appointed to the Shelby County Election in April 2019. He works in analytics and innovation at FedEx Express.
https://www.shelbyvote.com/team/bennie-smith
9:03
https://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-video/