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Sarasota Selling Defective Voting Machines

odd2 Even as the New York Times reported that attention to November’s disputed Congressional election in Sarasota has faded, Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent announced her intention this week to begin selling —presumably “as is”— hundreds of Sarasota's touch-screen voting machines proven defective by the November election, where they malfunctioned so badly that frustrated poll workers actually resorted to advising voters who were unable to get their votes to register to try using their knuckles.

Dent has resolutely denied that anything was wrong with the voting machines, despite a Sarasota Herald Tribune poll which reported that the overwhelming majority of precinct officials interviewed cited difficulty getting the electronic touch screens to register their votes as the biggest complaint.

Even though she is eminently responsible for disenfranchising as many as 18,000 voters from having their votes counted in the most hotly-contested Congressional race in the country, Dent appears defiant, and unabashed.

One reason for this intransigence has now become clear: There’s a big payday involved.

"Troubled, maybe. But all they need is a good home."

0201snapNot for her (not, at least, yet), nor the long-suffering taxpayers of Sarasota County  footing the whopping $4.6 million bill for the soon-to-be-junked touch screen voting machines from industry giant Election Services and Software.

The payday will enrich only voting machine vendors, who will be only too happy to take the defective machines off the county’s hands for pennies on the dollar; then turn around and resell them to unwitting election officials in unsuspecting counties in another part of the country, whose voters will remain clueless about the machines “troubled” history until after the check’s have been cashed.

No surprise there. Election machine companies comprise the constituency which Dent has vociferously championed and defended against all comers, even at the expense of the people she was elected to serve.

0201snap2Re-cycling bad product to new patsies is a familiar scenario in the election industry, and a sign of a return to “business as usual” for an industry which counts on the fact that Americans have short memories.

But it does appear to be the first time an election supervisor paid to represent voters and taxpayers has instead protected  from criticism and scrutiny an election machine company responsible for selling the electoral equivalent of thousands of automotive “lemons.”

"La plus ca change."

0201snap9Take a look at a couple of headlines from the Los Angeles Times:

“COMPUTERIZED VOTE TALLIES HAVE TOO MANY GLITCHES, EXPERTS CHARGE,” reads one.

“ELECTRONIC ELECTIONS SEEN AS AN INVITATION TO FRAUD,” reports the second.

These may sound like headlines ripped right out of yesterday’s newspaper…But the date on one is July 4, 1989; the other is from December 3 of that same year.

In the ensuing 18 years, it is fair to say, nothing much has changed.  

0201snap5So the real question is: How do the companies and individuals involved in this conspiracy keep getting away with it?   

One answer, of course, is that representatives of voting machine companies, including some who have been previously convicted of bribing public officials, not considered much of a "blemish" in the industry, are notorious for spreading the wealth around.  

These are people who can be counted on to remember with fondness Kathy Dent’s refusal to point a finger of blame at anyone besides the voters in her district.

Who loves ya, baby?

After Dent is either voted out of office, or, in a more likely scenario, resigns to “spend more time with her family,” they will be there with offers of assistance and employment.

It’s a well-trodden path, with election companies making defense contractors look like Boy Scouts in contracting the labor of people who only recently were charged with regulating their new employers.

In Florida, the past two Secretaries of State, responsible for state-wide elections, for example, both “cashed-in” after leaving public office by taking lucrative “lobbying” jobs with election machine companies.  

And then of course there is former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, whose payback for choosing sides in the 2000 Presidential vote snafu in Florida included a Congressional seat of her very own, and, so she thought, a good shot at becoming a U.S. Senator.  

Who you calling a "dummy front company?"

please misterThe upcoming Sarasota sale is not the first time a key player in the saga of Sarasota’s touch screen voting machines has been involved in a scenario in which a major investment in voting machines was written off by frustrated election officials.

One of the key individuals at the heart of the Sarasota election story, Gary Greenhalgh, was involved in such a situation ten years ago in Pennsylvania. Voting machines he sold there were adjudged by election officials and a U.S. District Court to be, alas, defective.  

Greenhalgh, a vice president of Election Services & Software, the largest election services company in the country, was responsible for the sale and installation of the electronic touch screen machines in Sarasota County, and perhaps instrumental in much of the rest of Florida as well.

Moreover, he has beentmcm intimately involved in setting policies and practices in the American election biz since the days of Gerald Ford, when he worked for the Federal Election Commission. Greenhalgh's well-chronicled career offers a window on long-standing industry practices.

(Would it weren’t so! Greenhalgh, you’ll recall, is threatening to sue us for slander and libel in Federal Court in Washington D.C. for the way he’s been portrayed in these pages during the past several months.)

"The never ending story is a never ending story."

!!CVOTE821034The story begins in Montgomery County, in suburban Philadelphia.  At the time, Gary Greenhalgh was the vice president for sales for MicroVote, an Indiana-based election machine company.

From a report about the electronic voting machine deal between Greenhalgh’s MicroVote and suburban Montgomery County in the Philadelphia Inquirer on AUGUST 5, 1996:

”It should have been a heady moment, as Montgomery County's election staff met in the Norristown courthouse two years ago to bring voting into the computer age. With overwhelming voter support, the county had chucked its clunky, 50-year-old lever voting machines for compact electronic models from Indiana-based MicroVote Inc.”

It was “a venture that began with high hopes, but would end in a fiasco less than two years later,” the paper reported.  

What went wrong? According to the Inquirer, just about everything…  

“The lightweight MicroVote machines were expected to produce quicker results and be easier to maintain than the lever machines. But, county officials say, too many MicroVote units lost power, jammed or otherwise malfunctioned in the last two elections… This resulted in long lines, in voters leaving polling stations before they voted, and in lost votes.”

"He's in recovery with that Republican Congressional molester, what's- his-name."

Montgomery-PA-map200A headline in the Nov 12, 1995, Allentown Morning Call summed up the result:

“HIGH-TECH VOTING FLOPS IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY”

 ”Two years ago, Montgomery County commissioners spent $ 4 million to buy a high-tech electronic system that was supposed to make voting easy and tabulation quick. But if the cumbersome, confusing events surrounding Tuesday's general election were any indication, the commissioners might consider going back to paper ballots and an abacus for next year's presidential contest.

‘It was a catastrophe,’ said Commissioner Joseph Hoeffel, a Democrat.”  
 

As recriminations began, it occurred to public officials that the Election Commissioner responsible for the big purchase was, alas, an alcoholic…

In mid-1994, Montgomery County Chief Clerk Nicholas Melair said he began receiving anonymous letters alleging that McAdoo had a drinking problem.

"A drinking problem can actually work to your  advantage"

yodel-788845"You hear through the grapevine, 'Gary got Mike drunk and that's how the machine was purchased,' " said Greenhalgh, who said he spent time with McAdoo in restaurants where "we certainly had a couple drinks together."

"But I must have kept Mike drunk for a year and a half because that's how long this process took," Greenhalgh said.  

McAdoo said his drinking didn't become a problem until fall 1994, at the end of his county career, and did not affect his judgment on MicroVote.  He described the county election job as extremely stressful.  

"I'd still be drinking if I was there," said McAdoo, who is now a produce manager for a suburban supermarket.

"I have never run into a staff that's as uncooperative and just outright nasty as those people," Greenhalgh said about Election Board employees in an interview.

"Sue me sue you" blues redux

The glitches in the voting machine persisted through several election cycles. Eventually Montgomery County sued MicroVote, Microvote sued Montgomery County, and everybody went to court to sort things out.

The County’s attorneys summarized what happened in a press release later:

“Microvote Corp. sold an electronic voting system to Montgomery County. The County contended that the voting system malfunctioned after the voting machines shut down randomly and unpredictably as a result of their microcomputer chips sensing internal power surges emitted by the motors that scrolled the ballot pages.”

"This resulted in long lines, in voters leaving polling stations before they voted, and in lost votes.  In addition, after the polls closed, the software malfunctioned when counting the votes, causing Microvote employees to report the wrong results to the media.”

“The jury returned a verdict against Microvote and Westchester for in excess of $1,048,500.  Microvote and Westchester appealed.  The Third Circuit affirmed the jury verdict and the judgment of the District Court on all issues.  The dismissal of all claims against the County and its subsequent settlement, jury verdict and judgment, won by EG&S, represent a swing of in excess of $3.4 million for the County.”

Reported the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“In June (of 1996) county commissioners dumped the MicroVote machines for a loss of $4 million and agreed to spend $4 million more to buy a new computerized system just in time for the November presidential election.”

"What we got here is…failure to communicate!"

culp_billAnd this is when the story takes a big turn for the worse.  

Montgomery County traded their defective machines, which had malfunctioned in three straight elections, to a company which turned around and resold them.

The eventual result was that following a series of transactions a hapless Election Supervisor named Bill Culp in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County ended up buying more than 400 of Montgomery County's rejects.

Culp didn’t know it yet, but he was already half-way towards assuming a position on the chain gang for taking bribes. A story in the Dec 11, 2000 L.A. Times reported:

“While Bill Culp Jr. was election director of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, voting machine salesmen were eager to treat him to a very good time.

“One salesman paid for two days at the historic La Fonda Hotel on the main plaza in Santa Fe, N.M. A company manager took Culp and about 20 other county commissioners and election officials to dinner and dancing at an expensive Houston steakhouse.

“The president of an Indianapolis voting-supply firm invited him to a Pacers basketball game when the home team faced off against Culp's beloved Charlotte Hornets. Culp and his host sat court-side in the owner's box.

“Without binding regulations and with little oversight, these relationships breed disregard for protecting ballots, obtaining the best equipment and safeguarding public funds. At worst, close ties erode integrity.

”Culp knows it. He left a Maryland prison in September and lives in a Charlotte, N.C., halfway house, where he is ending a 30-month sentence for accepting 122 bribes and kickbacks worth more than $134,000 from January 1990 to March 1998.”

 
"The Mecklenburg Corruption" by Robert Ludlum

microvoteThe "Mecklenburg Corruption" is a likely preview of what's in the future for Sarasota’s "malfunctional" touch screen voting machines. From the same article in the LA Times…

“Voting machines he (Culp) bought from the salesman who paid him off had enough problems that he wrote four letters of complaint even as he was taking the bribes.

“Publicly enthusiastic, Culp privately complained about the same defects that led to the chaos in Pennsylvania. "The obvious weakness in the scrolling mechanism concerns us," he wrote to the company on May 13, 1996.”

Imagine how bad things have to be before you begin writing nasty letters to people paying you bribes.  

The L.A. Times story briefly recounts the similar conviction of Jerry Fowler, the Commissioner for Elections for the state of Louisiana. Fowler took bribes for an entire decade before being caught. The story makes a point worth repeating:   

     “In neither the Culp nor the Fowler case was a voting machine executive accused of wrongdoing.”


One step ahead of the law's a good place to be

This is exactly the point we'd be making, only… only we don't have lawyers on staff the way the LA TIMES does.

The only people who went to jail for "The Mecklenburg Corruption" were Bill Culp and Ed O'Day, a so-called “independent salesman.” Ed's "independence" conveniently kept MicroVote officials at one remove from the sordid goings-on.

Even though he was the national sales director for MicroVote, Gary Greenhalgh, we must hasten to inform, was never charged or convicted of any crime in the case.

In fact, he showed himself to be remarkably nimble during the course of the proceedings. On the day before the FBI subpoenaed records of transactions between the county and MicroVote, Greenhalgh went public about Culp’s culpability( "The Culp Culpability"), emphasizing he was acting more in sorrow than in anger:
 

Greenhalgh said his attorney sought to question Culp and O'Day because MicroVote had accused him of falsifying expenses. He said Culp and O'Day had dined with him at MicroVote's expense and therefore could verify his expense reports. Greenhalgh said he would be surprised and sad if an investigation found Culp guilty of any wrongdoing.

But he said he recently learned about Mecklenburg County's policy that bars employees from taking anything of value from current or prospective vendors.

Lavish: Very generous; Characterized by extravagance.

In an earlier story, we’d made the point that Greenhalgh had personally “lavished” dinners and entertainment on Election Supervisor Bill Culp.

In his letter threatening to sue, this was, alas, a sticking point for Greenhalgh. After berating us for neglecting to mention that he was Assistant Staff Director at the Federal Election Commission for 13 years, has a PhD., and founded the Election Center, Greenhalgh wrote:

EarthaKittCat“Also, I'd like a copy of … my announcement that I had personally "lavished" dinners and entertainment on Bill Culp in Philadelphia and Atlantic City."

We didn’t quite get the point. It wasn’t like we'd accused him of feeding booze to an alcoholic, the earlier (and no doubt unfounded) charge in Pennsylvania.

"What do you mean, Eartha Kitt tickets don't count?"

But that’s neither here nor there. Mr. Greenhalgh's admission that he had personally lavished dinners and entertainment on Bill Culp is contained in a story on March 12, 1998 headlined FBI SEEKS ELECTION BOARD RECORDS” in the Charlotte Observer:

Greenhalgh, former sales director of MicroVote Corp. of Indianapolis, said he sometimes picked up the check for Culp and his wife, Deena, during and after the time MicroVote was trying to win the contract for county voting machines.

At an annual elections officials' conference in Philadelphia last May, for instance, Greenhalgh said, he paid for the Culps to eat at a well-known seafood restaurant. He said he also paid for a happy hour at the popular Martini Bar on Market Street and for a lunch at the Marriott hotel downtown, both of which Culp attended.

"When he went out with us, that dinner was paid for out of MicroVote," Greenhalgh said. Greenhalgh said he often took Culp and his wife, Deena, out for meals and entertainment while seeking the county's business.

He also said he took the Culps to dinner in Washington and afterwards to an Eartha Kitt performance at a Georgetown night club. "I bought a lot of meals for Bill…"

Happy Hour at The Martini Bar? Count us in!

Martini-Bar-PostersDinner in Philadelphia at a popular seafood restaurant (Bookbinders?), Happy Hour at the Martini Bar, and Eartha Kitt in Georgetown may not rise to the level of “lavish” entertaining on Greenhalgh’s scale; we're confident a jury in a Federal libel trial in Washington D.C. will not find the description too, you know, lavish.

We also have to admit to being utterly fascinated by the "independent" status of Ed O'Day, who the Charlotte Observer described as “a Columbia-based agent of MicroVote.”

“O'Day is president of United American Supply Co., a company that had sold elections-related software to Mecklenburg. Because Greenhalgh believed O'Day had a friendly relationship with Culp, and because winning an equipment contract with North Carolina's most populous county would be "a huge plum," Greenhalgh said he wooed O'Day to work as an agent for MicroVote in 1992 or 1993,” reported the Observer.

Perhaps this is what led the LA TIMES to wonder aloud about whether Ed O'Day's “independent contractor” status might have been a fig leaf covering MicroVote’s private parts…

“In neither the Culp nor the Fowler case was a voting machine executive accused of wrongdoing.”

"Indy-con" Ed O’Day, by the way, hasn't let his felony conviction stand in the way of further advancement.

He’s hard at work, once again, wooing election supervisors, we discovered in a brief blurb about a hospitality suite he had “hosted” as a recent conference in Georgia.

Plucky fellow.

"A heart-felt paean to the home team"

convicts_tshirt_prisonerIsn’t America grand?

A felony conviction gets you purged from the voter rolls in Florida. But slide across the state line to Georgia and you're welcome to be an integral part in the casting and counting of literally millions of votes!

And then there's Greenhalgh’s long-time colleague, the late voting systems specialist Robert Naegele, who 'way back when' designed standards for the Federal Election Commission still in effect.

img016Naegele was quoted in the New York Times back in the 80’s about the relative ease with which fraud can be committed with electronic voting machines, because of what he described as "the polynomial problem;" i.e. the vastness of the computer spaces involved.

Naegele testified as an “expert witness” at Mr. Greenhalgh’s behest in the Montgomery County unpleasantness, but his testimony was disallowed when it was revealed he had been relying on a “guesstimate” supplied to him by Greenhalgh, about a feature of an election which Greenhalgh was forced to admit he hadn’t personally witnessed. A U.S. Appeals Court did not consider this to be good form.

Do you ever get the feeling that, sometimes, you can almost feel the vastness Naegele called the polynomial problem?

We do, too. And when we do, we realize we’re a long long way from Kansas... and even further from the lessons we once learned in Civics Class about the workings of the  greatest democracy the world has ever known.

 

NEXT: MORE GARY GREENHALGH. A two-fer, with no commercial interruptions.

Daniel Hopsicker
Daniel Hopsickerhttp://www.madcowprod.com
Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist and the author of two books on transnational crime, Welcome to Terrorland and Barry & the Boys.
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