Reply #35: Ex-Officials Now Behind New Voting Machines | L.A. Times 11/10/03

[Stephanie]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-revolving10nov10,1,7149331.story?coll=la-home-leftrail

Ex-Officials Now Behind New Voting Machines
Those who led the state's ballot-count reforms now work for the firms making the equipment.
By Tim Reiterman and Peter Nicholas
November 10, 2003

As secretary of state in 2001, Bill Jones moved to rid California of the type of antiquated voting machines that helped throw the presidential election into turmoil in Florida. Then last year he sponsored a successful $200-million industry-backed bond measure that gave counties money to buy high-tech replacements.

Now, the former elections chief is a paid consultant to one of the major voting machine firms vying for that business.

One of his former top aides has become a vice president for business development with the same company, Sequoia Voting Systems. Another former employee is working on Sequoia business strategies.

And the official who oversaw the certification of new voting machines under Jones has signed on as a competitor's California general manager.

Out of the tumultuous 2000 presidential election has come a national initiative to replace punch-card voting devices with modern optical-scanning and touch-screen systems. And in California, where 54 counties are expected to buy about $400 million in new equipment, some voting machine makers are hiring former government officials such as Jones to supply prestige, entre or expertise for a competitive edge.

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But Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation, said, "The regulators and the regulated are so closely intertwined that the regulators go almost exclusively to for information and answers to questions."