Sequoia and Essex County - the outrage continues
by: Kate
May 11, 2006 at 16:27:46 EST
(Why do counties keep wasting money with this company, and who in the state isn't allowing them to purchase machines from any other company? The Vote-Trakker systems have a verifiable paper trial technology and cost much less than Sequoia systems, for example. Something fishy is going on, and it's costing us a LOT of money.
Why did Essex County this week approve emergency funds to pay Sequoia Pacific an additional $120,000 to remedy a problem Sequoia itself caused by failing to meet contractual obligations?
This is a question Essex County's adhoc Task Force on Voting has been asking itself all day. The Task Force began the struggle against the purchase of Sequoia Advantage DRE voting machines a full year ago.
After succeeding in delaying approval of the county's contract with Sequoia from May 2005 through November (cynics may wish to note the contract was approved at the first Freeholder meeting after election day), the fight seemed lost.
Kate :: Sequoia and Essex County - the outrage continues
All of the information provided to Freeholders and the Election Superintendent in Essex pointed to a number of important facts about these new machines:
they are not new at all, but rather use 1980s-era processing technology;
they are among the most costly voting systems out there;
they fail to provide for the private, independent vote for disabled citizens that Help America Vote Act (HAVA) dollars were allocated to ensure in the first place;
they fail to comply with numerous federal voting systems guidelines, including being certified to the 2002 standard (1990 standard is the best Sequoia can do); computer scientists predicted as a consequence of the antiquated technology, Advantages would not be able to be retrofitted to comply with state law mandating a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) by the deadline of 1/1/2008 (an opinion affirmed in Mercer Superior Court last month), and if and when possible, the cost will exceed the already-exorbitant price of $2,000 per machine for what amounts to the addition of a printer;
finally, the legion of problems the Sequoia company has been complicit in should give pause to any purchaser who had choices -- and Essex County did have choices (thanks to the efforts of the citizen group), but none the Attorney General's office seemed willing to support.
So, $8,000 apiece for a 1980s-era computer and $2,000 apiece for printers. Would you buy one of these for your home or office?
After paying top-dollar for antiquated voting systems, then seeing the vendor fail to deliver these machines by February 28, as specified in the contract, Essex County's Election Superintendent Carmine Casciano came back to the well to seek funds from the County capital budget -- $58,000 -- to pay Sequoia money to help receive and prepare the machines for use in June elections. The Elections Clerk, Linda Von Nessi, asked for a similar amount to help the county train poll workers. $120,000 in all.
Let's go over this slowly:
(1) virtually no negotiation for competitive pricing on a proven flawed voting system;
(2) vendor failure to deliver as contractually obligated;
(3) resulting time crunch for county officials to conduct needed testing and training and
(4) the wayward vendor is rewarded with additional dollars to fill the void created by its earlier failure.
Way to advocate, Essex County!
Why isn't Essex terminating its contract with this vendor, at this point, or at very least suing for damages? And why on earth should *taxpayers* pay *Sequoia* a single cent more for its screw up?
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