{"id":4862,"date":"2007-07-24T12:46:32","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T19:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=4862"},"modified":"2007-07-25T01:14:08","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T08:14:08","slug":"pa-county-election-director-decries-unsavory-business-practices-deception-of-ess-and-other-voting-system-vendors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=4862","title":{"rendered":"PA County Election Director Decries ‘Unsavory Business Practices, Deception’ of ES&S and Other Voting System Vendors"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Blogged by Brad from Houston…<\/i><\/p>\n

Michael P. Buffer at The Citizens Voice<\/i> is reporting<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We have now booked Piazza as a guest to discuss the issue on this evening’s Peter B. Collins show<\/a>, 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.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

For now, here’s the lede today from Citizens Voice<\/i>:<\/p>\n

In a letter to state officials, Luzerne County Director of Elections Leonard Piazza bashed the company that provided the county’s voting machines and asked for financial help to pay for a three-year warranty priced at more than $300,000.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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,”\u009d 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.<\/p>\n

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.”\u009d<\/p><\/div>\n

UPDATE:<\/em> 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”\u201dand that would suggest that the democratic process itself has been broken.” It is now posted in full here [PDF]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> (in Hour 3<\/i>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ess","category-pennsylvania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4862"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=4862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}