John Gideon: Corporate Control of the Election Process

[AtLiberty]

Corporate control of the election process

by John Gideon
June 22, 2005
The Free Press

Those who hold the sacred trust of overseeing the election procedures and voting systems in this country are an alphabet-soup of organizations. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS); the National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED), the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC); the Election Center. What do these groups have in common? They either receive their funding from the vendors or are greatly influenced by those who do receive funding from the vendors. We can only hope that the EAC can resist the influence. The others haven't.

Who are these "vendors"? The vendors are the corporate face on our elections systems ­ the for-profit companies that develop and sell the equipment used to run our elections. They are those who have the most to gain from the influence they buy through their donations and dues to the alphabet soup, and that influence is considerable. They include names like Diebold, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic, Accenture, UniSys, Accupoll, and more. In fact they are all proudly named on the list of corporate affiliates of NASS.<1>

The NASS Corporate Affiliates Program

How does a company become a "corporate affiliate" of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and what does it mean? According to a description of the NASS Corporate Affiliate Program, corporations can donate annual dues in the amount of $20,000, $10,000, $5,000, or $2,500. Those funds go directly into the coffers of NASS. And what do the corporations get for donating to this worthy cause? "The NASS Corporate Affiliate Program is a savvy way to share ideas and build relationships with key state decision makers while supporting the civic mission of the association."<2>

Build relationships with key state decision makers? In other words, unrestricted access to lobby the people who will be spending the taxpayers' money to buy new election equipment. The scale of this unrestricted access is directly, and openly, related to the amount of "dues" that the corporation pays to the program...

For the rest of the story, click:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1328