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August 17, 2005
Remaking the Rules
Private voting-equipment companies play part in reforming
county elections
By CYDNEY GILLIS
Staff Reporter
Nine months after the election disaster of 2004 and its lost
ballots and dead voters, King County is struggling to reform its elections
division — an effort that has involved three separate reviews of the division
by independent groups.
One of them is a team of elections officials contracted
through The Election Center, a Houston-based nonprofit association that has
confirmed receiving donations in the past from voting equipment makers such as
Diebold, the provider of the optical-scanning machines that King County uses to
count ballots.
Election Center filings with the Internal Revenue Service
show that from 1997 through 2000 the organization received $10,000 a year from
Sequoia Voting Systems, an Oakland, Calif., maker of touch-screen voting
machines.
Doug Lewis, executive director of The Election Center, whose
more than 1,000 members include current and former elections officials and
executives from voting equipment companies, confirmed the donations for the
Philadelphia Inquirer, which first reported the information in March 2004.
Lewis also told the paper that the group had received
donations of unspecified amounts from Omaha-based Electronic Systems &
Software and “probably Diebold.”
The eight-member team, led by Ernie Hawkins, a retired voter
registrar from Sacramento, Calif., was hired in May by King County to perform a
process-by-process audit of elections management and procedures under a $300,000
contract.
According to a briefing given Monday to the King County
Council by County Auditor Cheryle Broom, who is overseeing the contract, the
team’s focus is on methods, not machinery — though the audit will cover
ballot-counting processes.
Broom says she was unaware of the donations. A Sequoia
executive quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer said the donations were intended
to further The Election Center’s work in training election officials.
“ They had to sign off on an independence form that there
would be absolutely no conflicts of interests for conducting this audit,” Broom
says. “We take that pretty seriously.”
Councilmember Larry Gossett says he views it as a potential conflict of interest that would require more information.
Councilmember Kathy Lambert says she was not concerned about
the donations from touch-screen makers because the performance audit being
conducted by The Election Center and its local partner, Issaquah-based
Strategica, involves respected officials who only want the best for King
County.
“ I think that is totally separate from this,” Lambert says.
“ What they’re looking is climate, candor, accuracy,” she
says of the team’s focus on the election division’s culture. “Those things are
far more in-depth than which equipment you’re using. I have no problem with
them being objective at all.”
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