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Marked with: 
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| DOES ES&S REALLY WANT TO SELL THE AUT... |
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johngideon
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: johngideon
Post Number: 56
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 3:12 pm: | 
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Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) has a marketing agreement with AutoMARK Technical Services (ATS) to be the sole purveyor of the AutoMARK voting machine. ATS can market the system, but pricing and contracts are all handled by ES&S. In March of 2004, when ES&S announced the agreement, Aldo Tesi, ES&S president and CEO said, "we recognize the incredible responsibility we have in supporting the democratic process and ensuring it is open and accessible to all voters."
A few months later, when ES&S representative Mike Devereaux praised the AutoMARK over touch screens, it appeared that ES&S had partnered with ATS in order to take advantage of the growing demand for paper ballots. The company's subsequent business decisions seem to say otherwise.
ATS describes their AutoMARK voting system as “a ballot marking system designed to provide privacy and accessibility to voters who are blind, vision-impaired, or have a disability or condition that would make it difficult or impossible to mark a ballot in the usual way. In addition, it provides language assistance to voters who are more comfortable speaking an alternative language or who have reading difficulties. The
AutoMark voter assist terminal has been developed with input from election authorities and disability organizations, and meets all of the requirements of “The Help America Vote Act of 2002.”” The system marks a ballot that is inserted into the machine. That ballot is then either read by a precinct based optical scan machine or is put into a ballot box and read, later, by a central count optical scan machine; or by hand.
>>snip<<
http://www.votetrustusa.org/blogs/ES&SControl.htm
Information Manager, VotersUnite.org
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admin
Board Administrator
Username: admin
Post Number: 535
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 6:41 pm: |
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John: This is an absolutely fantastic article. Folks, please keep this kicked.
We've been hearing about the possibility that ES&S bought AutoMark to control it and stall it rather than sell it, but your investigative article is documenting this for all to see.
I take my hat off to you!
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting, Inc. |
johngideon
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: johngideon
Post Number: 57
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 7:09 pm: |
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Just to clarify ES&S did NOT buy AutoMARK. AutoMARK is owned by AutoMARK Technical Systems which is a spin-off of Vogue Elections who developed the AutoMARK machine. ES&S has an exclusive contract to market the AutoMARK machines.
Information Manager, VotersUnite.org
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arn
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: arn
Post Number: 55
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 8:27 pm: |
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So what can a county interested in AutoMark do if ES&S is refusing to cooperate? |
catherine_a
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: catherine_a
Post Number: 333
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 8:16 am: |
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It is not uncommon in business that a market leader would take actions such as this to squelch competition. (E.g., by buying an exclusive license to sell a product, but then sitting on it and doing nothing to kill it off.) Where it's our democratic right that's at stake, as in the case with AutoMark, this is no long "just predatory business practice."
That's part of the problem with all of this--the e-voting question is getting caught up in predatory corporate practices, not to mention corruption involving politicians and other vested interests (such as a property developer who might want to see a certain politician elected to ensure he/she can develop a certain lucrative project, and who therefore might want to see a certain kind of election machinery put in place to ensure the "right" person gets elected).
It's like a tree with a very deep and convoluted root system that reaches into many areas that we never dreamed of from looking at the part of the tree that's above the ground.
Whether or not AutoMark can do anything would depend on the terms of the contract it signed, and on the extent to which ES&S is obliged to provide results/sales. Conceivably AutoMark could sue ES&S for breach of contract if ES&S were breaching whatever agreement was made. Of course, if AutoMark execs were paid off then maybe they wouldn't care whether or not anyone actually bought any of their products.
It doesn't seem likely that a county could do anything about this, unless it wanted to develop its own product. I don't think you can force someone to sell you something if they don't want to. Unless one could prove collusion to rig an election and prove that the licensing agreement was part of the plot. This would probably take a well-placed whistleblower and a paper trail, which would be challenging.
(Message edited by catherine_a on May 25, 2005) |
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