Sec. of state's campaign advisers also represent e-voting firm
Myung Oak Kim and Lynn Bartels
Published December 20, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.
Updated December 20, 2007 at 8:19 a.m.
Photo by Judy DeHaas / The Rocky
Secretary of State Mike Coffman crosses a bridge at 1700 Broadway where officials from the state, Mesa and Jefferson counties, and Election Systems & Software met Wednesday morning to discuss the decertification of ES&S electronic voting machines. Coffman didn't attend the meeting.
The political consulting company running Secretary of State Mike Coffman's congressional campaign also was working for a voting machine manufacturer when Coffman gave that company's devices his seal of approval on Monday.
Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, was the only one of four voting machine companies to have all of its equipment conditionally approved for use in 2008 elections.
Premier hired Phase Line Strategies, a Highlands Ranch consulting firm, in September to lobby on its behalf, records show.
Phase Line also is running Coffman's campaign to take over U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's 6th Congressional District seat. Coffman said he hired Phase Line in November but has been talking to them since the summer.
"This is an outrageous conflict of interest," said Paul Hultin, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit that resulted in Coffman's certification process.
Hultin said Premier's machines are known to be flawed and there was no credible basis for Coffman to certify them. "This explains what was going on," he said.
Coffman and a Phase Line official both deny that Premier got any special consideration in the lengthy review of Colorado's electronic voting systems.
"There was absolutely no outside influences that affected any of my decisions on the vendors," Coffman said Wednesday night.
Chris Riggall, spokesman for Premier, said the company found out Wednesday night about Phase Line's connection to Coffman.
"That was certainly news to us and of great concern to us . . . and effective tonight that relationship is terminated," he said.
"Oh my God!" said Claudia Kuhns, executive director of the Voter Integrity Project, an advocacy group that pushes for accurate and verifiable elections. "I thought (the certification process) was politically capricious before but now I really do.
"When you have a situation where there's the appearance of impropriety, it really causes one to be completely distrustful of the entire process."
Process defended
Coffman said Phase Line's president, Sean Tonner, is running his campaign and that another person at Phase Line, Mike Ciletti, is working with Premier. He said Ciletti asked for a meeting with county clerks and his office, but his request was denied.
Coffman sent the Rocky Mountain News e-mail correspondence regarding Ciletti's meeting request and the rejection from Deputy Secretary of State William Hobbs.
Coffman said he set up a thorough testing system with independent auditors and consulted with the attorney general's office so that he could make sure the certification process was sound. He said he expects litigation and is confident his decisions can be defended in court.
Ciletti said his firm and Premier "were treated no differently than every other vendor."
"We received the same cold shoulder that all of the clerks and vendors received throughout this process," Ciletti said. "Folks are on a witch hunt looking for excuses, and they need to be focused on fair and accurate elections."
Response to court order
Coffman on Monday announced the results of a yearlong certification process conducted in response to a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by voters who say electronic voting machines are unreliable.
Coffman decertified all equipment made by Election Systems & Software, which supplies more than 2,000 machines to Jefferson and Mesa counties.
He also decertified some equipment made by Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems because of security and accuracy flaws. More than 40 counties use Hart equipment and several counties, including Arapahoe and Denver, use Sequoia.
Premier supplies machines to 12 counties, including El Paso, Weld and Larimer.
Coffman's decertifications have thrown preparations for 2008 elections into disarray and caused high anxiety among election officials.
Coffman's testing board recommended that all electronic equipment be decertified, but Coffman used his discretion to decide which systems were "substantially compliant." He said he approved Premier's systems with conditions because the problems were not serious.
The same Premier machines used in Colorado, however, have been found to be easily hackable and inaccurate in studies done in other states.
Members of Coffman's office met Wednesday with county clerks and officials from Sequoia and ES&S and are scheduled to meet with Premier and Hart today.
Clerks and vendors can appeal the decertification decisions within the next three weeks.
bartelsl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5327 Burt Hubbard contributed to this report.
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December 19, 2007
9:45 p.m.
Suggest removal
pappy writes:
It would be interesting to know specifically why the ES&S machines were de-certified. Additionally it would be interesting to know how they got certified in the first place, and have successfully been used for the past 5 years. I am not implying that there is something foul here; just curious as to the details as to how this came about. Jefferson County has been very successful in conducting it’s elections over the years, and unless there is some specific reason the machines are error prone (which should also call previous elections into question) I see no need for panic.
December 19, 2007
9:50 p.m.
Suggest removal
pappy writes:
An additional comment... I would prefer we not use electronic balloting in any case...
December 20, 2007
1:56 p.m.
Suggest removal
ajb writes:
Let me get this straight-
Under court order, Coffman assembled a panel of security experts to look at voting machines. Good.
Those experts recommended that machines from ALL the vendors be decertified. Still good.
Mike Coffman then overrode the decision of the experts. He decided that the machines of ONE company were OK for use. Huh????
That company, Diebold (with a new name, Premier), hired the folks running Coffman's congressional campaign committee to LOBBY THE SECRETARY OF STATE! (That would be Coffman).
Isn't this kind of $#!% illegal?
And didn't the NY Times (12/15/07) just report that Diebold machines are easily hacked? How can their problems be "minor"?
More importantly, how can we trust elections when Mike Coffman is in charge? He's either crooked or incompetent. Either way, he's not qualified to be Secretary of State.