[Fwd: The Money Trail: The inside story on Diebold and the NFB]

I believe someone was looking for something like this recently.  David?

-j

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ballistichelmet] The Money Trail: The inside story on 
Diebold and	the NFB
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 12:22:46 -0400
From: dvanhorn <[email protected]>
Reply-To: list for the ballistic helmet heads <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

[ NYTimes article below. -d ]

The Money Trail: The inside story on Diebold and the NFB
June 15, 2004

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Black Box Voting is doing research on the money trail. We have three stories
-- the first one broke last week in the New York Times. Here's the rest of
that story.

I began the money trail investigation in Ohio, planning to investigate one
particular set of officials. They are still on my plate, because I stumbled
into something else that caught my attention.

For some reason, my instincts told me to drive to Mercer County, Ohio, to
appear at their meeting about whether to buy touch screens.

A bit of background:

Ohio senator Teresa Fedor made a brilliant move in the state senate, forcing
the counties to reaffirm the contracts they'd signed if they really wanted
touch screens. The National Federation of the Blind stepped in and filed
lawsuits in all 31 counties, threatening to sue for civil rights violations
unless they bought touch screens.

With CASE Ohio activist and lawyer Susan Truitt, I went to Mercer County, 5
hours away. This county has just 28,000 voters, and just one voter who is
visually impaired. Thus, it is bizarre for them to consider spending
$300,000 on Diebold touch screens instead of a hundred bucks for a single
tactile ballot.

The Mercer County officials seemed a little surprised that we wanted to
attend. The prosecuting attorney, Andy Hinders, came down and read the
settlement offer from the National Federation of the Blind into the record.
This made me sit up and listen! First, in pending litigation they usually go
into executive session and settlement offers aren't available to the public.
(I immediately did a public records request for that document; Mercer County
Board of Elections Director Toni Slusser now claims the settlement letter is
a private document. Guess again: Not after it was read into the public
record. The Mercer County Board of Elections also violated Ohio sunshine
laws by discussing their decision on the Diebold purchase, and coming to a
decision, and writing the decision up in a letter -- outside of and before
the public meeting.)

The NFB settlement letter was worded only slightly more politely than this:
"We'll make our lawsuit go away if you hurry up and buy those touch 
screens."

Since almost all the 31 counties were contracting for Diebold touch screens,
I started to wonder about the relationship between the National Federation
for the Blind and Diebold. I'd heard there was an ATM lawsuit and a payment.

Here's what I found

1. The NFB sued Diebold and NCR over ATMs that weren't accessible. They
settled with NCR and Diebold, and the two firms retrofitted -- but only
Diebold paid money to the National Federation of the Blind. Diebold paid $1
million.

2. Then the NFB went on a lawsuit spree, suing a whole string of banks to
get them to buy retrofitted ATMs.

At this point, I called my co-researcher, Andy Stephenson. "Seems weird that
only Diebold paid cash in addition to retrofitting. Wonder if there have
been more payments from Diebold."

Instantly, he said, "The banks the NFB sued -- did they then buy Diebold?"

He went looking for that while I went looking for more.

I found:

3. The National Federation for the Blind announced a formal partnership with
Diebold on the ATMs. This was announced by NFB president Betsy Zabrowski on
Dec. 7, 2000 in an interview with the Daily Record, of Baltimore, MD. The
NFB embarked on a partnership -- or a shakedown cruise, depending on how you
look at it. NFB sues -- then says "We make this go away if you buy Diebold."

Andy found:

4. Yup. The banks that got sued then bought Diebold.

I found:

5. Inside source at Diebold: At least six banks are now considering dropping
Diebold ATMs. When Diebold did the redesign, quality problems arose and the
banks are unhappy. These banks include the biggies, reportedly Wells Fargo
and U.S. Bank.

6. What's wrong with this picture:

First, the organizations should DISCLOSE that they have taken payments, and
especially, any partnership agreements with Diebold, when they lobby for the
voting machines.

Second, the lawsuits were selectively filed -- and didn't say to get an
accessible option (there are at least three) but said only to get touch
screens. And the lawsuits weren't filed against all counties that don't have
touch screens, just against those who were in the process of purchase
negotiations.

==================

Enter the New York Times.

Adam Cohen, head of the editorial board of the New York Times, called me
wanting to do a story on the vendors who hired former public officials. I
gave him the rundown on what I know on that. "But you should do a story on
the blind," I suggested. "It's politically incorrect. You've got the clout
to do this, though."

I told him what we'd found. We talked for quite a while. Then he called back
to tell me he'd confirmed the $1 million (it's on the Internet). I sent him
the lawsuit from the NFB and a bunch of stuff. He uncovered more information
on financial transactions, including, significantly, $26,000 to the group
represented by Jim Dickson, a loud advocate who touts particularly erroneous
information (one Dickson article I read had a factual error in every line of
text).

On Thursday June 11, the article appeared in the New York Times.

The very next day, the NFB dropped its lawsuits in Ohio.

Of the 31 counties, only five are going ahead with touch screens.
Inexplicably, Mercer County, which is already using Diebold optical scans,
has decided to invest its taxpayers' money on Diebold touch screens, and
will purchase exactly the model that was decertified in California. I have
requested financial disclosure documents for Hinders and Slusser. They did
not send them, despite a public records request, saying I could only get
them from the state ethics board. After reading the minutes for the meeting
I attended, which inserted after both my name and Susan Truitt's an
erroneous assertion that we each represent TruVote (a vendor); minutes which
omit and mischaracterize (for example, calling tactile ballots a "TruVote"
system), I am especially interested in learning more about the officials in
Mercer County.

Jim Dickson of the AAPD may have been planning dramatic and theatrical bit
at the League of Women Voters national meeting, to dissuade them from
changing their stance. Something like -- planting someone at every
microphone in the caucus and dominating the floor. Dickson gets very 
dramatic.

Drawing attention to himself, just days after the New York Times revealed
that his group had taken $26,000 from the vendors, would not have been a
great idea. Fireworks were muted at the meeting and the League changed its
stance, an important development, since the League is one of the main
obstacles to congressional action on this issue.

>From the New York Times

"...What's even more troubling is that the group [National Federation for
the Blind] has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from
Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web
site. The federation stands by its "complete confidence" in Diebold even
though several recent studies have raised serious doubts about the company,
and California has banned more than 14,000 Diebold machines from being used
this November because of doubts about their reliability.

"Disability-rights groups have had an outsized influence on the debate
despite their general lack of background on security issues. The League of
Women Voters has been a leading opponent of voter-verifiable paper trails,
in part because it has accepted the disability groups' arguments.

..."Some supporters of voter-verifiable paper trails question whether
disability-rights groups have gotten too close to voting machine
manufacturers. Besides the donation by Diebold to the National Federation of
the Blind, there have been other gifts. According to Mr. Dickson, the
American Association of People with Disabilities has received $26,000 from
voting machine companies this year.

"The real issue, though, is that disability-rights groups have been clouding
the voting machine debate by suggesting that the nation must choose between
accessible voting and verifiable voting. It is well within the realm of
technology to produce machines that meet both needs. Meanwhile, it would be
a grave mistake for election officials to rush to spend millions of dollars
on paperless electronic voting machines that may quickly become obsolete..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/opinion/11FRI1.html

June 11, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT
The Disability Lobby and Voting

Two obvious requirements for a fair election are that voters should have
complete confidence about their ballots' being counted accurately and that
everyone, including the disabled, should have access to the polls. It is
hard to imagine advocates for those two goals fighting, but lately that
seems to be what's happening.

The issue is whether electronic voting machines should provide a "paper
trail" — receipts that could be checked by voters and used in recounts.
There has been a rising demand around the country for this critical
safeguard, but the move to provide paper trails is being fought by a handful
of influential advocates for the disabled, who complain that requiring
verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic
voting machines.

The National Federation of the Blind, for instance, has been championing
controversial voting machines that do not provide a paper trail. It has
attested not only to the machines' accessibility, but also to their security
and accuracy — neither of which is within the federation's areas of
expertise. What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1
million gift for a new training institute from Diebold, the machines'
manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web site. The federation
stands by its "complete confidence" in Diebold even though several recent
studies have raised serious doubts about the company, and California has
banned more than 14,000 Diebold machines from being used this November
because of doubts about their reliability.

Disability-rights groups have had an outsized influence on the debate
despite their general lack of background on security issues. The League of
Women Voters has been a leading opponent of voter-verifiable paper trails,
in part because it has accepted the disability groups' arguments.

Last year, the American Association of People With Disabilities gave its
Justice for All award to Senator Christopher Dodd, an author of the Help
America Vote Act, a post-2000 election reform law. Mr. Dodd, who has
actively opposed paper trails, then appointed Jim Dickson, an association
official, to the Board of Advisors of the Election Assistance Commission,
where he will be in a good position to oppose paper trails at the federal
level. In California, a group of disabled voters recently sued to undo the
secretary of state's order decertifying the electronic voting machines that
his office had found to be unreliable.

Some supporters of voter-verifiable paper trails question whether
disability-rights groups have gotten too close to voting machine
manufacturers. Besides the donation by Diebold to the National Federation of
the Blind, there have been other gifts. According to Mr. Dickson, the
American Association of People with Disabilities has received $26,000 from
voting machine companies this year.

The real issue, though, is that disability-rights groups have been clouding
the voting machine debate by suggesting that the nation must choose between
accessible voting and verifiable voting.

It is well within the realm of technology to produce machines that meet both
needs. Meanwhile, it would be a grave mistake for election officials to rush
to spend millions of dollars on paperless electronic voting machines that
may quickly become obsolete.

Disabled people have historically faced great obstacles at the polls, and
disability-rights groups are right to work zealously for accessible voting.
But they should not overlook the fact that the disabled, like all Americans,
also have an interest in ensuring that their elections are not stolen.


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