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> From
> The Oakland Tribune
> 
> 
> SEQUOIA QUIETLY LEADING STATE E-VOTING
> 
> 
> FOREIGN OWNERSHIP AN ISSUE FOR RISING OAKLAND COMPANY
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> June 18-19, Article Last Updated: 6/19/2006 02:32 AM
> By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> For three years, the nation's two largest suppliers of voting machinery have
> driven feverishly for sales and shown the symptoms of overextension -- missed
> deliveries, faulty equipment and breach-of-contract lawsuits.
> 
> Until recently, the supplier running a close third kept a lower profile than
> competitors Diebold and Election Systems & Software, though quietly snapping
> up sales of voting systems on both coasts, all of Nevada and Louisiana, as
> well as Chicago and Cook County.
> 
> With a $13.3 million contract signed Friday by Alameda County, Sequoia Voting
> Systems arguably became the dominant voting-system maker in California, with
> more counties than any other.
> 
> Outside California, a controversy has sprung up over the foreign ownership of
> Oakland-based Sequoia.
> 
> Politicians in the Windy City and CNN journalist Lou Dobbs suggested recently
> that the federal government was derelict in not having investigated Sequoia
> and its acquisition last year by Smartmatic, a Boca Raton, Fla., firm largely
> owned by Venezuelan businessmen.
> 
> After Chicago and Cook County were plagued with delays this spring in tallying
> a primary, city alderman Edward Burke suggested Sequoia's voting machines were
> part of a conspiracy by Venezuela President Hugo Chavez to manipulate U.S.
> elections.
> 
> "We may have stumbled across what could be (an) international conspiracy to
> subvert the electoral process in the United States of America," Burke told
> reporters. ...
> 
> Soon after, editorial writers at Investors Business Daily warned that "we
> might just get ambushed again if the Venezuelan government ends up controlling
> our elections."
> 
> In late May, the U.S. Treasury Department requested Sequoia and Smartmatic
> documents on the transaction, as a potential preliminary to review by the
> Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., ...
> 
> Next to a television logo reading "Democracy for Sale," Dobbs said, "we know
> what we're dealing with, and it is a dysfunctional government that is trying
> to render our elections precisely the same."
> 
> The indignation has taken Sequoia executives by surprise, partly because
> Sequoia has been foreign-owned for 24 years. The firm's roots go back to 1890.
> 
> In the early 1980's, Sequoia was sold to the Irish printing conglomerate
> Jefferson Smurfit, which sold the company to De La Rue, a British banking
> technology and currency printing house. Sequoia lost money in 2004 and De La
> Rue sold it to Smartmatic Co. of Boca Raton, which is owned by companies of
> the Smartmatic Group based in the Netherlands and Curacao.
> 
> Smartmatic was a virtual unknown until 2004 when as part of a consortium, it
> won a $91 million voting machine contract in Venezuela. Another firm in the
> consortium, Bizta, had some of the same investors and had gotten a loan from
> the Venezuelan government secured by a 28 percent equity stake. The
> consortium's machines were used in the unsuccessful 2004 recall referendum
> against Chavez.
> 
> News of the Venezuelan government's stake in Bizta sparked protest, and
> Smartmatic officials said, Bizta paid off the loan before the election.
> 
> Smartmatic purchased Sequoia a year later, and executives of both companies
> say neither has ties to the Venezuelan government.
> 
> Sequoia executives say the purchase by Smartmatic, another voting company, has
> been a good fit.
> 
> "It is a wonderful and healthy partnership, and I couldn't be happier," said
> Howard Cramer, Sequoia's vice president of sales. The firm employs 150; just
> more than half are in Oakland.
> 
> ...
> 
> Elections officials in the Chicago area say most of their problems in the
> March primary sprang from shifting to a new voting system of three different
> electronic components after decades of voting on punchcards.
> 
> For Cook County Clerk David Orr, Sequoia's foreign ownership is a "bogus
> issue," said Orr spokeswoman Kelly Quinn.
> 
> Critics of electronic voting say Sequoia's Venezuelan ownership isn't as much
> an issue as the industry's penchant for secrecy.
> 
> Doug Jones, a computer science professor and voting systems examiner in Iowa,
> said the company matters less if the voting machinery is open to public
> scrutiny.
> 
> "You care less about them if the system is patently transparent and you can
> tell whether it's honest," Jones said. "If we had sufficient transparency in
> our elections systems, the devil himself could build our voting systems and we
> could still hold honest elections."
> 
> Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com