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Politics : Election Fraud Reports -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (655)	4/8/2006 10:18:51 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1729

Ed Burke smells an international conspiracy. Where is Raymond Duray when we need him? Burke: Ballot snafu was conspiracy April 8, 2006 BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter The City Council's most powerful alderman on Friday accused the Venezuelan-owned company at the center of the ballot-counting debacle March 21 of being part of an "international conspiracy to subvert the electoral process" in the United States. Smartmatic International Group, parent company of Sequoia Voting Systems, is more than 90 percent owned by the Mugicas, a family of Venezuelan nationals. Family patriarch Antonio Mugica is Smartmatic's CEO. On Friday, Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) questioned Sequoia President Jack Blaine, Perry Mason-style, about the company's Venezuelan ownership. The cross-examination not only traced the ownership of Sequoia through as Burke put it, "four countries, two hemispheres and three shell corporations." It evoked what Burke called the "mind-boggling" disclosure that 15 Venezuelan nationals had traveled to Chicago on March 21 to provide "technical support" and oversee the tabulation of votes. "Because of the disastrous results of the election March 21, we've stumbled across what could be the international conspiracy to subvert the electoral process in the United States of America," Burke said. "I'm saying that the potential for tampering with the American electoral process -- where presidential elections can be determined by just one state -- exists here. . . . Don't you think that [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez would love to be able to control elections in the United States of America? This is just the beginning." 'It's a crackpot theory' After a tentative performance before a joint City Council committee, Blaine dismissed Burke's Venezuelan-connection theory as utter nonsense. "It's a crackpot theory. . . . Some young Venezuelans, who are very, very competent people, became successful and accomplished a lot. And because they come from Venezuela, they're being stereotyped," Blaine said. "The ability of Huge Chavez to be manipulating the vote in Chicago is impossible. . . . I don't know how anybody can manipulate the result. The voter has looked at how he voted and it has to match how the electronic vote is." Chicago Election Board chairman Langdon Neal said he sees nothing wrong with 15 Venezuelans helping to count Chicago ballots because they provided "only technical support," and 100 election board employees were "sitting right next to them watching every move they made." "I have not seen anything yet which would cause me to be concerned about our election process," he said. County Clerk David Orr said Burke's conspiracy theory sounds like it originated in a right-wing blog. "These are the same questions that the losing vendors last year supplied when they lost -- with their powerful lobbyists and their powerful relationships over many, many years," Orr said. Asked if he knows of any ties between Burke and the losing bidders, Orr said, "I don't. I just say it's the same questions. You'd have to ask him." Burke said he doesn't know whether he has received any campaign contributions from Sequoia competitors. But his law firm has not done any legal work for losing bidders. Election chief: Too late to fire firm For the first time, voters in Chicago and suburban Cook County used touch-screen and optical scan machines in the March 21 primary. But when election judges tried to merge results of the two systems, many of the machines failed. That forced vote-counting to drag on for a week. Candidates in a handful of races were sitting on pins and needles, and suburban tax referendums hung in the balance. Neal has withheld $16 million in payments to Sequoia and unveiled an 11-point plan to correct the system's problems, focusing on better training of election judges and finding fixes for the company's flawed software. After his interrogation of Blaine at Friday's hearing, Burke suggested Sequoia should never have been awarded the contract -- and should be fired on the spot now. Neal said that's out of the question. There is simply not enough time to issue a request for proposals, select a vendor, negotiate a contract, manufacture and test the equipment, Neal said. Dumping Sequoia would also invite a lawsuit. "To change any vendor at this point . . . eight months before an election would be a Herculean task. It would probably be a disservice to the citizens of Chicago," he said. fspielman@suntimes.com suntimes.com