In a shocking mid-August report by Dan Rather for HDTV, the veteran newsman disclosed factory failures of Sequoia Voting Systems and Election Systems and Services (ES&S) so severe that they could lead to prosecution on commercial fraud against the two leading vote machine vendors.

The report, “The Trouble With Touchscreens,” puts Sequoia Voting Systems smack in the middle of the infamous controversy around “hanging chads” that wreaked havoc with the 2000 Presidential election vote count. View the broadcast or read the transcript (first scan the transcript list for "The Trouble With Touchscreens").

Sequoia produced the punch card ballots used in the 2000 election in Florida and also markets high-margin electronic vote machines. The company, according to the report, is alleged to have altered its ballot production process for one or more Florida counties and began printing ballots on cheaper and what seven former employees claim to be defective paper along with conspicuously inadequate production specifications. Employees are quoted extensively as having alerted the plant manager to potential problems to the point of refusing to sign off on production runs, but were repeatedly rebuffed.

The other segment of the Rather report, equally disturbing, involves Election Systems and Services (ES&S), one of the top three U.S. electronic vote machine makers along with Sequoia and Diebold (the latter just renamed "Premier Election Solutions" in a desperate public relations ploy). The key revelation was from a senior employee of an ES&S contractor sent to overhaul operations at a factory in the Philippines, who said that 15,000 or more potentially defective voting machines were shipped from that factory to the United States. The defect was in the ES&S touch-screens, which are considered to be the culprit in, among other incidents, the loss of 18,000 votes in a 2006 Sarasota County, Fla. Congressional race. ES&S machines are used in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) and other jurisdictions in PA.

The Rather report is having repercussions across the voting industry as the companies scurry to do damage control. It comes on the heels of a devastating series of reports on electronic vote machines (DREs) of the major vendors from the state of California. (See our article, “Sequoia Software Flunks Security Probe in California.”) California decertified the machines and will consider passing on them only if their use is limited to one per poll site for the disabled and all their votes are hand-counted using a paper trail.

It is time to act. Voter Action, a national leader in the election integrity movement, is calling on the U.S. Congress to launch a full investigation into the connection between industry practices and threats to fair elections . Sign the Voter Action petition.

Sequoia’s connection to the Florida 2000 vote count fiasco is traced back to a Sequoia plant in Exeter, California in 1999. According to the Rather broadcast, ''we talked to people at the company that made the ballots -- some workers, some management. They say they were making quality punch cards for a long while and proud of it. But starting around 1999, the cards were made from what they felt was inferior paper. They raised concerns about it, but the company's management had them under pressure to get the ballots out.'' The report also noted that workers were ordered to destroy all evidence of the defective paper after the chaos in Florida hit the news.

Sequoia plant employee Linda Evans recalls specifically the chad testing of ballots for the 2000 election, telling Rather: “Chads were falling out. Chads were hanging up. We've got a machine that we call a gang punch, which in a sense punches out all the holes at the same time. You slide the card in there and you pull down the handle and it punches out all the holes. They weren't punching out. They were hanging up all over the places. They were aware of that.” And Sequoia management’s response: “It'll be okay.”

Sequoia’s motive, say some plant employees – and this is partly what makes the story a potential blockbuster - was to catalyze demand for its far more profitable line of direct recording electronic vote machines (DREs). “My own personal opinion was the touch screen voting system wasn't getting off the ground like that they-- like they would hope. And because they weren't having any problems with paper ballots. So, I feel like they-- deliberately did all this to have problems with the paper ballots so the electronically voting systems would get off the ground -and which it did in a big way,” says plant employee Greg Smith.

Fast-forward to the 2002 Help American Vote Act with its $3 billion plus federal largesse that went mostly to the big three vote machine makers for their “black box” DREs bought across the nation in the wake of Florida 2000 – not to mention the election nightmares in many places since - and it becomes hard not to take notice of these revelations.

Let’s not let this story die. Act now to press for Congressional hearings to ferret out the truth behind the vote machine industry. Did Sequoia Voting Systems knowingly market defective paper for the printing of ballots in the 2000 election in Florida? Have any of the other voting systems companies knowingly done the same, and if so, where and when? Such questions go to the heart of our democracy and the threat to fair elections.

Voter Action, which is contesting DREs in law suits around the nation, is calling on the U.S. Congress to launch a full investigation into the increasing influence and control that private companies have in the way we conduct our elections and to determine whether certain voting systems companies have committed crimes under federal and state anti-fraud statutes which should be referred to the appropriate authorities for prosecution. With Senator Diane Feinstein having already promised hearings on the security concerns surrounding DREs, this is a sensible next step.

Please take a moment and sign the Voter Action petition to Congress and pass it on to family, friends and associates. There is no more urgent issue that links fundamental questions of corporate accountability to freedom and the future of our democracy.