Bias in new vote-counting system? Obama donor’s company funds controversial election firm

A top director at a venture capital firm that finances a controversial new online voting system donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and also contributed the maximum allowable to Obama’s inauguration, KleinOnline has learned.

The internationally-headquartered company, SCYTL, has previously faced questions about the security of its electronic voting technologies, which are now set to be deployed in 900 U.S. jurisdictions.

The firm already provides balloting for overseas U.S. military and civilian voting in nine states plus elections technologies in several districts.

Concerns have also been raised about SCYTL’s ties to the Spanish government and to international venture capital firms.

The Drudge Report yesterday ran a feature entitled, “Foreign company buys U.S. election results reporting firm.” The article documented that SCYTL, based in Barcelona, acquired 100% of SOE Software, the leading software provider of election management solutions in the United States.

The official press release announcing the acquisition noted that SCYTL is a portfolio company of leading international venture capital funds Nauta Capital, Balderton Capital and Spinnaker.

Spinnaker Capital manages $5 billion in two funds specializing in emerging markets investments.

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2834021/posts

GLOBAL INTERNET VOTING FIRM BUYS U.S. ELECTION RESULTS REPORTING FIRM
Black Box Voting ^ | 1-12-12 | Bev Harris

Posted on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 12:09:34 PM by STARWISE

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Bye-bye, ballot box? S.D.-based Everyone Counts, which offers software for secure online voting, aims to sell companies and governments on its product
San Diego Union-Tribune, The (CA) - Friday, June 22, 2007
Author: Jennifer Davies, STAFF WRITER
From hanging chads to computer glitches that mysteriously lose thousands of votes, Lori Steele figures there has to be a better way to run elections.

Steele, a former investment adviser, became so obsessed with improving elections that she left her job to become CEO of Everyone Counts, a San Diego company that specializes in Internet voting software for public and private elections.

(snip)

Paul DeGregorio, former chairman of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a government agency created to improve the voting process, said he recently joined Everyone Counts as chief operating officer because the company has the best technology in the industry.

While he sees a big future in Internet voting, DeGregorio said the United States is lagging behind other countries because of the residual distrust from the 2000 election. Countries such as Spain, Argentina and the Netherlands have begun to test Internet voting. This year, Estonia, the former Soviet republic, had a nationwide election in which 3 percent of voters cast their ballots on the Internet.

Pere Valles , CEO of Scytl, a Spanish company that is a direct competitor of Everyone Counts, said Europe is taking the lead in the Internet voting market.

“In the U.S., it is going to be much more difficult,” he said. “But in Europe, it’s taking off.”

(snip)

FLORIDA ELECTIONS: Voting-machine firm merger investigated - Florida’s attorney general is investigating a voting-machine company merger that has voting-rights groups worried that the move will concentrate too much power over democracy in one private company.
Miami Herald, The (FL) - Thursday, December 17, 2009
Author: MARC CAPUTO, Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is conducting an anti-trust investigation of a voting-machine company merger that would create a near-monopoly over the levers of democracy in Florida and much of the United States.

McCollum’s office has issued at least six subpoenas covering every major voting-machine company as part of a civil investigation of Election Systems & Software’s $5 million acquisition of Diebold Inc.’s elections division — a merger that would give a private company too much power over the machines used to castvotes, voting-rights groups say.

(snip)

Under the state’s 1980 anti-trust law, McCollum could persuade a court to levy fines against ES&S or prevent the company from operating in Florida. By next year, the company is expected to be the exclusive provider of voting machines and services in 65 of the 67 counties in Florida, the nation’s most important swing state.

That means, under the acquisition announced Sept. 2, ES&S will provide election services to 92 percent of Florida’s 11.2 million voters.

More broadly, ES&S’s purchase of the competitor company gives it control of the voting machines in nearly 70 percent of the nation’s precincts, according to a federal lawsuit in Delaware filed by a rival company, Hart Intercivic. The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting its own inquiry.

McCollum’s investigation came to light Wednesday after eight voting rights groups sent him a letter urging him to open an inquiry — unaware that his office had already opened its investigation Sept. 10. The first subpoena was sent out Oct. 2.

(snip)

Documents show that the companies that received subpoenas are: ES&S, Diebold Inc., Hart-Intercivic, Sequoia Voting Systems, Scytl and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation.

http://www.timesleader.com/opinion/Tiny_district_takes_a_big_leap_into_online_voting_02-27-2011.html?pageType=mobile&id=6

A tiny district takes a big leap into online voting
Charleston Gazette (WV) - Sunday, February 27, 2011
Author: Keith Ervin The Seattle Times
SEATTLE - Eager to reverse a history of low voter turnout, the little-known King Conservation District is holding the largest online election ever conducted by a public agency in the United States.

One million voters are eligible to cast ballots over the Internet from their home computers in the supervisor election that started last week and ends March 15. Registered voters in all of King County are eligible to participate, except for those in Federal Way, Enumclaw and three smaller cities.

To some observers, it’s a bold leap into a future that younger voters are yearning for. To others, it’s a misguided and dangerous outsourcing of vote-counting.

(snip)

The district - which Executive Director Sara Hemphill calls “a fairly modest, humble operation” - has struggled to boost voter participation in its low-profile elections without breaking its $6 million budget.

So the conservation district hired Bellevue, Wash.-based Election Trust to conduct this election using remote-voting technology from the firm Scytl Secure Electronic Voting.

Internet voting has been used mostly in party primaries, labor union and corporate elections, and pilot projects to make voting easier for armed forces members and other Americans overseas.

The largest previous online public election - with a fraction of the conservation district’s voters - was a 2009 election of neighborhood board commissioners on Oahu, Hawaii. Voters there were given passcodes to vote by computer or telephone.

(snip)

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/tampa-election-software-firm-acquired/1210001

Tampa election software firm acquired

Posted: Jan 10, 2012 05:25 PM

Tampa’s SOE Software, a private firm founded in 2003 and a large provider of election management solutions in the United States, was acquired by the Spanish company Scytl, a provider of voting solutions in more than 20 countries. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SOE provides election software to more than 900 jurisdictions in 26 states and 14 state-wide customers. SOE is lead by entrepreneur Marc Fratello, the former CEO of the Tampa software firm Powercerv.

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Board Selects Former Georgia State Election Official Clifford D. Tatum to Serve as Executive Director
Targeted News Service (USA) - Saturday, October 22, 2011
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 — The District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics issued the following news release:

The Board of Elections and Ethics today announced that it has named Clifford D. Tatum to succeed Paul Stenbjorn as Executive Director.

(snip)

Paul Stenbjorn has accepted the position of Director of United States Operations for Scytl , Inc., a global election technology firm whose software has been used to support elections in a number of countries. Scytl has recently entered the United States market.

(snip)

Panhandle county offers Web vote to military abroad
Miami Herald, The (FL) - Sunday, May 25, 2008
Author: GARY FINEOUT, gfineout@MiamiHerald.com
A small Panhandle county that is home to one of the world’s largest air bases is embarking

on a sweeping experiment in Internet voting that could transform elections in the 21st century.

But the push by Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Pat Hollarn to use the Internet to make it easier for U.S. soldiers overseas to vote is drawing fire from voting activists who call her project “unsafe” and contrary to a new law that requires the state to use paper ballots.

Frustrated by the pace of overseas voting efforts undertaken by the Department of Defense in recent years, Hollarn has championed a plan that will let those living on, or near, three military bases in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan cast ballots in the November election.

During a 10-day period just before Election Day, voters living abroad will be able to enter a computer kiosk and vote on an encrypted electronic ballot, which will eventually be shipped to Florida via the Internet and then counted. Poll workers will be on site to verify that the person is a registered Okaloosa County voter.

Hollarn, an elections supervisor for the past 20 years, views her “distance balloting project” as just another type of absentee ballot that uses the Internet instead of the mail. The ballot will have all of the federal, state and local races that appear on the one used in Okaloosa County.

(snip)

Hollarn, who chides those opposed to cyber-voting as flat-earthers, insists that the voting mechanism will be safe, pointing out that the machines and software supplied by Scytl Secure Electronic Voting will be reviewed by an independent team of computer analysts.

Alec Yasinsac, a Florida State University computer scientist on the Operation BRAVO Foundation’s board, said the only reason he is involved is to ensure that overseas voters get their votes counted.

(snip)

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President Obama pitches $18 billion wireless broadband plan