Alderman Burke alerts about Chavez's involvement in US elections
By Aleksander Boyd
London 08.04.06 | Smartmatic officials, in their condition of owners of Sequoia, were summoned for public hearings yesterday in Chicago. The reason being the e-voting fiasco of primaries held in Cook County on March 21, for which Sequoia was contracted. Alderman Ed Burke declared "We’ve stumbled across what we think could be an international conspiracy to subvert the electoral process in the United States of America,” as reported in some media.
Cook County Clerk David Orr dismissed Burke's comments and Jack Blaine, Sequoia's president, called the conspiracy argument a "crackpot theory" (sic). Blaine's remarks were to be expected, however Orr's commentary may have revealed just fine where his simpathies are. As reported here in August last year, David Orr knew full well that Smartmatic was behind Sequoia:
"Smartmatic International, which is owned by a Dutch company, owns Sequoia Voting Systems. Some key investors of the said Dutch company are Venezuelans" (sic).
In this instance Orr seems forgiving about the recent electoral debacle stating "It may have helped Chairman Burke to talk about Hugo Chavez. I don't know that it helped the citizens of Chicago, the city board of elections, to find the best ways to make the election work better." Surely, in Mr. Orr's view, the chosing of Smartmatic's e-voting machinery did help Chicago citizens, the city electoral board and improve elections processes...
But Smartmatic electoral debut in the USA appears to be marred with controversy and problems. Steve Patterson with the Chicago Sun-Times, reported yesterday:
The company that provided voting machines for the problem-plagued primary here two weeks ago is under fire in Pennsylvania, where software problems and concerns about the potential for fraud have led one county to shift its contract to a competing firm.
To the unlearned, about Smartmatic and its connections to the Chavez regime, one can only advice extreme caution, for allowing the utilisation of such unreliable electronic voting devices in the USA amounts to rendering its democracy in a silver platter to its enemies, as it was the case in Venezuela. Learn from our experience and keep Fidel and Hugo well away.
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