Obama makes first move to undermine 2010 elections

GETS FORMER SEQUOIA CO. VP NAMED AS ADVISER TO U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

by John Charlton

(Dec. 21, 2009) — Earlier this month, Obama made his first official move to corrupt and undermine the 2010 elections.  The move consisted in the little noticed appointment of a technical adviser to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

The importance of the appointment was explained at The Brad Blog last Monday.

The Official Press Release of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission read as follows:

U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

1225 New York Ave. NW – Suite 1100

Washington, DC 20005

For Immediate Release

December 11, 2009

Contact:

Jeannie Layson

Sarah Litton

(202) 566-3100

New Technical and Scientific Experts Appointed to EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee

WASHINGTON- The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) today announced the appointment of four new technical and scientific experts to its Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), which is charged under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) with assisting EAC in developing federal voluntary voting system guidelines that are used to test and certify voting systems.

The following new members were appointed jointly by EAC and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):

Thereupon it lists a series of advisers appointed, among whom is:

Edwin B. Smith, III, vice president of compliance and certification at Dominion Voting Systems. Before joining Dominion Voting Systems, Mr. Smith was vice president of manufacturing, compliance, quality and certification at Sequoia Voting Systems. He also served as the operations manager at Hart InterCivic and the senior director of operations at K*TEC Electronics. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelor of Science in engineering technology from Texas A&M.

Both Sequoia Voting Systems and Dominion Voting Systems have been at the center of infamous voting irregularities in different elections across the country, according to Brad Friedman’s article on the subject, which appeared in the Gouverneur Times at the end of November.

At his Blog, Brad Friedman explains who Edwin B. Smith is:

Smith is the guy who, after years of paying a crackpot contractor named Mike Gibbons to do this and that for Sequoia with loads of federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) tax-payer cash, assigned him to do an “independent” analysis of Sequoia’s touch-screen machines after they failed in NJ’s 2008 Super Tuesday election. That was just after Smith had sent a letter threatening two Princeton computer scientists with legal action “to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis,” if they performed the actually independent analysis of the machines as they were tasked by NJ election officials to do. (Additional outrage/irony shortly thereafter uncovered by The BRAD BLOG: Sequoia didn’t even own the Intellectual Property rights to the machines in question. Rather, the IP rights were, and are still to our knowledge, owned by Smartmatic, a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez. Sequoia lied to both federal investigators and state election officials about that relationship.)

After The BRAD BLOG exposed who Smith’s friend Mike Gibbons actually was — a Sequoia insider, as well as a drunk and a philanderer with an obnoxious Facebook page seeking a “well endowed blond nymphomaniac,” only to change the page after we’d outed him to feature a photo of him and George Bush Sr. and a professed love of Jesus Christ instead — Gibbons was fired. (He would be found dead a few months later, the actual cause of which we’ve never been able to ascertain.)

Smith was severely reprimanded at Sequoia for the embarrassing incident, and has now been rewarded by moving on to Dominion, which is in partnership with his old friends at Sequoia to supply the new, failed e-voting systems recently deployed, disastrously, for the first time in last November’s election — the one where the results of the NY-23 Special Election for U.S. House will now forever be in question. The Sequoia/Dominion contract to supply faulty, secret vote counting machines to NY-23 is worth some $20 million federal tax-payer dollars.

The Post & Email notes that the other appointees to the Technical Committee have qualified liberal connections:  Iowa State Elections Commission and the University of Columbia.  Neither are experts in computer software, or the forensic investigation of computer hacking.

A copy of the official Commission’s Press Release can be read at Brad’s blog.  The Commission describes itself and its importance in overseeing the counting of votes in elections across the country, thus:

The EAC is an independent commission created by the Help America Vote Act. The EAC serves as a national clearinghouse and resource of information regarding election administration. It is charged with administering payments to states and developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, and accrediting voting system test laboratories and certifying voting equipment. It is also charged with developing and maintaining a national mail voter registration form. The three EAC commissioners are Gineen Beach, chair; Gracia Hillman, vice chair; and Donetta Davidson. There is one vacancy on the commission.

The appointment makes the commission much more able to “assist” the 2010 Elections, but not in the sense you and I mean by the word “assist.”

UPDATE:  See the Comments Section for an important notice on this article.

Finally, you can read the exchange between the president of Sequoia Voting Systems and Brad Friedman in the comments section of the article he wrote at the Gouverneur Times.