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Analyzing The E-Vote In Venezuela
by Winter Casey
While controversy over paperless e-voting machines continues to make headlines in the United States, there was not a machine without a paper trail to be found in Venezuela's Dec. 3 presidential election, according to the Venezuela Information Office.
In the election, President Hugo Chavez, who has been the country's leader since 1998, defeated opposition contender Manuel Rosales.
Venezuelan elections are overseen by the National Electoral Council, which has performed audits in recent years on the country's voter registry. The e-voting machines, which use Smartmatic technology, are required under a 1998 law.
The country's voting system not only includes paper receipts that can be counted in the case of disagreements, but the council "has invested in a technology that splits the source code for the machines into four parts, which are then divided among stakeholders, including a representative from the [council], opposition parties, pro-government coalitions and international observers," said the office, which receives funding from the Venezuelan government.
"In order for any change to the coding of the computers to be implemented, each of these parties must access the machines simultaneously," the office said.
The e-voting machines were successful because of the paper receipts deposited into ballot boxes, according to John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank that promotes human rights and democracy. Following the election, 54 percent of balloting stations were randomly selected to participate in an audit, Walsh said.
Because the United States has not been a fan of the economic policies or rhetoric of Chavez -- who famously referred to President Bush as "the devil" during a United Nations speech in September -- the election process has been closely scrutinized, said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor of Latin American history at Pomona College, said "international observers have documented that Venezuela is one of the most scrutinized voting systems in the world. With the combination of the electronic balloting, the receipt and the fingerprinting, they have established one of the most effective electoral systems that we have seen."
He advocated a mechanism to provide U.S. citizens with paper receipts when they vote.
Weisbrot said "the technology works very well. The combination of the electronic vote with the paper receipt gives you a very secure system." The government also used digital fingerprints that "were probably unnecessary, but no harm was done," he said.
"Venezuela has a very secure and reliable system," and there "were careful safeguards to make sure there was no way to connect anyone's identity with their vote," Weisbrot said.
Walsh agreed that there were no major problems with the election system but said the country's "electoral registry is clearly flawed." Though adequate for a national election at the local level, he said, there are much larger problems.
Walsh said the digital fingerprints also are "a flawed idea because in the first place it is supposed to prevent repeat voting, but it doesn't really because the technology still doesn't work, and if they aren't deployed in 100 percent of voting stations, someone could still, if they wanted to, vote twice." He called the fingerprint technology "unproven."
"The bigger issue for these elections was that the opposition had made a big deal that fingerprint machines were meant to break the secrecy of the vote, but this idea as a technical matter was shown not to be true to the satisfaction of the technicians on all sides," Walsh said. The fingerprint machines, however, were "still distrusted by the opposition," and it would "have been good if the council had decided not to use the fingerprint machines at all."
Cynthia McClintock, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, also said the electronic machines with the paper trails were very successful, but the "fingerprint scans were not useful." She said that was in part because "the databank they were supposed to be checking the fingerprints with was incomplete," and voters often skipped getting the official fingerprint because they were slow and inefficient.
The European Union concluded last week that the elections occurred in "a peaceful and transparent atmosphere, thus providing a good basis for the further development of democratic institutions and political dialogue in Venezuela."
The U.S. State Department said the European Union plans to send a delegation to Caracas in February 2007 to present the final conclusions of what it observed.
USTR Reviews China's WTO Compliance
China has made progress in meeting its obligations under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, according to a congressionally mandated annual report released Tuesday by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The accord seeks to harmonize technical regulations and product standards among countries.
"China addressed problems that foreign companies had encountered in locating relevant regulations and how they would be implanted, and it took steps to overcome poor coordination among the numerous regulators in China," the report said.
The United States has offered China technical assistance to address the relationship between intellectual property rights and standards, as well as for specific standards in industries such as information and telecommunications technology.
Though China has "overhauled its legal regime" since joining the WTO in 2001, the nation "has continued to demonstrate little success in actually enforcing its laws and regulations in the face of challenges created by widespread counterfeiting, piracy and other forms of infringement," the report found.
The country also has failed to establish a "truly independent regulator in the telecommunications sector," the report said. The current regulator maintains "extensive influence and control over their operations and continues to use its regulatory authority to disadvantage foreign firms."
The United States has urged China to circulate the country's draft telecom law for public comment.
ITC Finds Qualcomm Infringed Broadcom Patent
The International Trade Commission upheld a ruling by an administrative law judge that Qualcomm infringed on one of three Broadcom patents, Broadcom said this week.
The commission affirmed the October finding of Judge Charles Bullock that Qualcomm violated a Broadcom patent to help cellular telephones conserve battery power when out of network range.
"Qualcomm expects other companies to respect and pay dearly for the use of its intellectual property but refuses to respect the intellectual property of others," David Dull, Broadcom's general counsel, said in a statement. "The commission's decision is an important step toward leveling that lopsided view.
"We fully intend to prosecute this ITC case to conclusion, and to continue to aggressively enforce our patent rights against Qualcomm in other pending cases."
Qualcomm said that if the full commission follows the recommendations of the administrative judge, the "commission's order would not have a disruptive effect on Qualcomm's business."
The commission now will consider the best way to address Qualcomm's infringement and will issue its determination by Feb. 9.
In other news, the Oxford Health Alliance, a broad coalition of nonprofits, government agencies and businesses aimed at promoting good health, plans to build a virtual community that will focus on major health issues. The alliance said the Web site will be an "open space for health."
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