Catching up with a few old friends

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:21:50 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 26, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Catching up with a few old friends

Back in 1993-94, many observers wondered why new Clark County elections chief Kathryn Ferguson would commit the county to what turned out to be tens of millions of dollars in expenditures to adopt the already dated technology of the Sequoia Pacific "full-face ballot" electronic voting machines, over less expensive systems which can optically scan and store the results of punch-card ballots.

At the time, the reliability and tamper resistance of these huge beasts -- bigger than kitchen stoves and requiring 125,000 square feet of air-conditioned storage space, along with considerable annual moving expense and ongoing maintenance -- had already been challenged in New York and Pennsylvania.

There was also the problem of a Nevada state law which required that the "hard copy" of the voter's actual ballot be retained for possible recounts -- a safeguard offered by the cheaper, competing optical scan systems, but not available from Sequoia's all-electronic technology. Ms. Ferguson got around that by pressuring then-Secretary of State Cheryl Lau -- who no one would mistake for Xena the Warrior Princess -- into certifying that a print-out tape of the Sequoia's disc memory could be counted as a "hard copy" of the voter's original ballot ... even though it's not. (A misprogrammed hard drive will simply generate the same flawed printout no matter how many times you query it -- regardless of whether the bad math is accidental, or whether insiders have rigged the machine on purpose.)

So determined was Ms. Ferguson to buy the Sequoia machines for Las Vegas that a former member of her elections department team tells me Ms. Ferguson resorted to the simple exigency of having Sequoia Pacific representative

Howard Cramer send her a list of bid specifications, designed so that Sequoia's machines were the only ones that could possibly meet them.

"The reason that happened is that the Sequoia Pacific machines are so danged expensive, if they'd come up with an RFB (Request for Bids) that other companies could have met, Sequoia-Pacific would never have got it."

But why this insistence on the S-P machines, in the first place?

"All I know is that before she got there she had some kind of working relationship with Howard Kramer; it appeared she'd worked with him back in Texas because he started showing up from day one, almost. ... When Ferguson got there she had already decided what she wanted. Her mind was already made up, it was just kind of going through the motions like she was evaluating 'em. ..."

Skip forward six years. Riverside County, Calif. bought 4,200 newer, "ATM-sized" touch-screen voting machines from Sequoia Pacific in the year 2000, for $14 million. So readers of the Riverside Press-Enterprise were doubtless interested when the paper reported last Sunday that "Philip Foster, the (Sequoia Voting Systems) project manager who oversaw Riverside County's first all-electronic election in November, was indicted in January in a decade-long kickback and money laundering scheme involving the sale of voting equipment."

Foster protested his innocence after being "implicated in the guilty pleas of a Louisiana election official and others involved in a scheme that helped land former Louisiana elections chief Jerry Fowler in federal prison," David Seaton and Laurie Koch Thrower of the Press-Enterprise report.

"A Louisiana state audit released in August 1999 documented a complex purchasing scam involving voting machines that apparently cost taxpayers $8 million. ... Foster still works for Sequoia, and the company supports him, said Peter Cosgrove, Sequoia's chief executive officer. ...'As a company, we believe the allegations against him are without merit, and we believe the statements against him were made by convicted felons,' Cosgrove said."

Meantime, what's become of Kathryn Ferguson, who was hired here in Clark County even after County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates acknowledged the accuracy of a charge by candidate screening committee member Tamara Clark that Ms. Ferguson made the list of finalists only due to a creative entry on one of two differing versions of her resume -- the one presented to the screening committee by county staff, which exaggerated the number of years she'd held a parallel post in Bexar County, Texas? (Commissioners Don Schlesinger and Karen Hayes refused to go along with the switch. Ms. Atkinson Gates turned to then-County Manager Pat Shalmy at the time and told him he'd be held responsible if Ms. Ferguson screwed up -- almost as though Mr. Shalmy had played some active role in maneuvering her into the job.)

Ms. Ferguson left Clark County to assume a similar, $120,000 post in San Jose, Calif. But she's not there any more.

"Kathryn Ferguson, Santa Clara County's registrar of voters, is leaving her post to take a job with Sequoia Pacific, an Oakland-based company that makes touch-screen voting systems," reported Michelle Guido of the San Jose Mercury-News on May 19 of this year. "Ferguson, who became the county's registrar in March 1999, will leave her $120,000-a-year job June 8 ... to become Sequoia Pacific's vice president for government and public affairs."

" 'I just have a really good opportunity; I'll be testifying before Congress and working with state legislatures and other governmental entities,' " Ferguson told the San Jose paper.

"But Ferguson will not be participating in Sequoia Pacific's expected bid this summer to install a pilot touch-screen system in Santa Clara County," the California daily concluded. "The county's ethics code forbids it, she said."

I called Ms. Ferguson Friday at her home in San Jose.

Ms. Ferguson said "No," she had no concern that her acceptance of the job at Sequoia Pacific might appear to be a payoff for favors -- those big county purchase orders -- rendered in the past. She reports Santa Clara has not yet put in a bid to buy Sequoia Pacific machines. "It looks like that may not happen," she said, although she has not been directly involved, since "That's what would be the conflict of interest."

Ms. Ferguson declined to say how much she's making in her new job, remarking "I don't have to tell you that any more."

Back here in Clark County? "We looked at (Sequoia Pacific's new) ATM-sized machines when (the county's existing machines) were recertified at the Secretary of State's office last month; it would be our goal to go that way, but we haven't approached the commissioners about money at this point," Assistant Registrar Donna Cardinelli told me Friday. (Registrar Larry Lomax was away attending an elections seminar in, um ... New Orleans.)

The goal would be to buy "less than a hundred" of the new machines, which can display ballots in either English or Spanish at a single touch of the screen, "to supplement our existing machines, just in places where there's more demand for the bilingual," Ms. Cardinelli explained. Otherwise, "We're still going to keep our full-face ballot."

Ms. Cardinelli said she had no idea what such a new Sequoia Pacific purchase might cost.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To receive his longer, better stuff, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in

the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin 1759

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair