|
The
Chairman of the laboratory which the
New York Times
revealed has been barred from approving
electronic voting machines, after federal investigators
discovered appallingly haphazard testing regimes at
the firm,
dumped 25,000 common shares of stock in the
company less than two weeks before the bad news was
announced,
netting himself almost $175,000, the MadCowMorningNews
has learned.
In a little-noticed Securities and Exchange Commission
filing on Dec. 21,Ciber,Inc
Chairman Bobby G. Stevenson reported he sold the
shares for about $6.71 apiece. The stock has fallen
since.
The
bad news from CIBER, which tests the centralized software
that local elections offices employ to tabulate votes
recorded by the touch-screens, may even affect the
outcome of the hotly-contested Congressional decision
in Florida’s 13th District, reported the Sarasota
Herald Tribune in a story on the troubled firm with
the headline a
a story on the troubled firm headlined "CIBER
Inc. at center of District 13 controversy.”
With
more than 18,300 undervotes in the 13th Congressional
District race, Democratic candidate Christine Jennings
has stated that Sarasota County voters deserve an
independent examination of the voting system, including
a review of its "source code." Her request was turned
down in a Florida courtroom two weeks ago.
Voting systems currently are certified under a
system established by the Federal Election Commission
and the National Association of State Election
Directors. But the new federal watchdog agency set up
for this purpose did nothing to alert the public that
the CIBER lab had been barred.
Experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest
that crucial features like the vote-counting software
and security against hacking may not have been
thoroughly tested on many machines now in use.
“What’s scary is that we’ve been using systems in
elections that Ciber had certified, and this calls
into question those systems that they tested,” said
Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns
Hopkins
Pay now. Scrutinize later.
The
problems at CIBER highlight the fact that until recently
the labs that test voting software and hardware have
operated without federal scrutiny. Even though Washington
and the states have spent billions of dollars to install
new voting machine systems, the machine manufacturers
have always paid for their testing.
Newspaper
reports in Colorado, where Ciber is headquartered,
criticized the firm’s executives
were being criticized by the government-watchdog group
Colorado Common Cause for giving political contributions
and gifts to state Republicans, even as Ciber's business
contracts with Colorado increased from $300,000 in
2000 to $2.3 million in 2003.
Adding to suspicion,
The MadCowMorningNews
has learned that CIBER has been the beneficiary
of considerable U.S. Federal Government largesse as
well, including a $500,000 contract in 2002 from the
North American Aerospace Defense Command; a $4 million
multiyear contract from the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. in 1999; a $23 MILLION Port Security Contract
at Port Freeport, Texas, and a five-year $12.6 million
contract from a "major aerospace company" in Colorado
whose name, CIBER reported, was being “withheld as
per the Contract.”
The
company out-sources back-office technical
functions for large corporations, and maintains a large presence in India.
Exporting US jobs, testing US
voting software
In addition to
exporting American jobs, CIBER's Chairman utilized an
ingenious but illegal scheme called the "kinky
forward" to avoid paying American taxes.
“In
January 1998 Merrill Lynch paid CIBER Inc. Chief Executive
Bobby G. Stevenson $82 million in cash for his agreement
to deliver a chunk of his CIBER shares by Feb. 1,
2001,” reported business magazine
Forbes on September
30, 2002.
“It
was a sweet deal for Stevenson, whose stock is off
80% since he got the cash. He locked in gains before
the tech market tanked, but would not be taxed on
his gains until he handed over the shares. Stevenson's
deal with Merrill was essentially a prepaid variable
forward contract--a "kinky forward,"
it's been called.”
A
judge in Lubbock, Tex.'s taxpayer-friendly federal
court rejected his bid to dismiss the $12 million
the IRS said he owed, on the grounds he should have
brought it in Colorado. Stevenson admitted spending
far more time on his oceangoing yacht, M/Y Sweet Pea,
sailing the seven seas than in the landlocked Texas
Panhandle.
The long arm of the Longhorn GOP
Unmentioned in the New York Times story on CIBER are
the firm’s strong GOP connections. Emp loyees
and spouses donated more than $72,000 to GOP
candidates and groups during the 2001-2002 and
2003-2004 election cycles, according to the Center for
Responsive politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
The Center for Responsive Politics found $5,750
worth of campaign contributions from Wyle Laboratories
for this year's election. All of the money went to
Republicans, including $1,500 to President Bush.
While
the industry’s strong ties to the Republican Party
have been noted in many places, what has escaped much
attention until now are the almost equally
strong ties the election industry
inexplicably
maintains to the state of Texas.
CIBER
Chairman Bob Stevenson, for example, is from Lubbock
Texas, is the largest single donor ever to alma mater
Texas Tech, and gave the de rigueur maximum of $2000
to George W Bush’s 2004 Presidential campaign.
Top Ten Governors investigated by
the FBI
CIBER
Inc.’s has done business with such colorful politicians
as former Kentucky Gov. Wallace G Wilkinson, who left
this Earth still owing a CIBER subsidiary, DigitalTerra,
almost a million dollars.
“If
the FBI has a Ten Most Investigated Governors list,
the name of Wallace G. Wilkinson must be on it,” reported
the Lexington Herald-Leader on MAY 9, 2003, eight
months after Wilkinson died.
The FBI investigated Wilkinson seven times in all
while he held office between 1984 and 1996, the paper
reported, and several times thereafter. He was actively
being investigated at the time of his demise.
"They
only closed it because he died," FBI employee Belva
Cork, who processes Freedom of Information requests
for the bureau, told the paper. That’s the kind of
politician any company would be proud to have in its
corner...unindicted.
Maybe
CIBER wrote off Wilkinson’s debt as goodwill.
CIBER
isn't the only company in the voting machine business
at which people are actively involved in politics,
of course, just the one in the news currently.
There’s
Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Ohio-based Diebold
Inc., the parent of electronic voting machine maker
Diebold Election Systems, who raised funds for President
George W Bush in the now-famous letter which attracted
attention in 2004, sent to Ohio Republicans to raise
money for the GOP, in which he said his commitment
was to "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes
to the president next year."
Scratch
the surface, and sleaze oozes from almost every pore
of companies in an industry which has been entrusted
with American’s sacred right to vote.
|