Blogged by Brad from Houston…
Michael P. Buffer at The Citizens Voice is reporting that Luzerne County, PA, elections director Leonard Piazza is furious at voting machine company ES&S for their attempt to charge some $300,000 for an extended warranty on their voting machines.
Decrying “the mix of deception this company promulgates” and the “unsavory business practices that vendors, such as ES&S, seemingly have a deep commitment to employing,” Piazza penned a letter to state officials recently with his concerns.
We have now booked Piazza as a guest to discuss the issue on this evening’s Peter B. Collins show, which we have been Guest Hosting. We also hope to be posting his letter in full here, and will update this item with it after we receive it. (NOTE: See update now at end of this article for full letter, and link to the archive of the radio interview with Piazza.)
For now, here’s the lede today from Citizens Voice:
The county last year spent $2.4 million in federal money to buy 750 touch-screen voting machines from Election Systems & Software, and a one-year warranty has expired on roughly half of the machines and will expire on the rest this year.
“In addition to not being able to meet the financial burden that ES&S is asking us to meet, we cannot individually deal with such a large, multi-national corporation and the mix of deception this company promulgates,†Piazza wrote in a July 19 letter to Deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth Thomas J. Weaver and Harry A. VanSickle, commissioner of the state bureau of commissions, elections and legislation.
Piazza asked the state to help ensure “that voting-system vendors doing business here do not have the opportunity to threaten the democratic process with such unsavory business practices that vendors, such as ES&S, seemingly have a deep commitment to employing.â€
UPDATE: The two-page 7/19/07 letter from Piazza to state officials, complaining about ES&S and asking for help ends, “As I’ve come to learn from other jurisdictions, once the confidence is lost, it is virtually un-retrievable—and that would suggest that the democratic process itself has been broken.” It is now posted in full here [PDF].
My on-air interview with Piazza — which was both informative, and at times a bit contentious — from today’s Peter B. Collins radio show is now archived online here (in Hour 3).
Leonard Piazza is the dude who threw me out of “his” courthouse in the summer of 2005 for asking too many hard questions of the vendors at the Luzerne County Voting Machine Expo.
http://www.votepa.us/newsarchive/7-21-05_LuzerneExpo.html
Ha Ha Ha. Maybe he should have asked some hard questions himself before he spent the taxpayer’s money on an unverifiable, highly vendor-dependent system.
Marybeth
http://www.VotePA.us
There are some 3000 plus counties with even more precincts within them in the US.
Each of those precincts has this type of character within them.
The gadfly party can spend eons of time doing nothing but talking about these people.
It is a cushy job with a good 🙂 future.
Like politics and condom manufacturing. 😉 Enjoy.
Whatever the past failings, he is coming out against the machine vendors now, and should be supported in that endeavor. Brad you did a good job pressing him for answers without acting accusatory. I felt your focus was squarely on the machine vendors at all times.
OT …
H. Res. 333 (Kucinich) needs a few more co-sponsors. It would be better if it was a bi-partisan resolution.
Conyers indicated he would move it along if it received 17 co-sponsors. It had 14 at last check.
That brings up Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). He has indicated his favor of the concept. He is also working with Representative Kucinich (D-OH) on ending the Iraq debacle.
There are a lot of Ron Paul supporters who read this blog, so give him a call and tell him about the House Resolution 333 to impeach VP Cheney.
Even one republican senator has used the “i” word.
Bi-partisan justice, its not just for England anymore.