It's ironic, in a sense. Here's this company Smartmatic (which acquired Sequoia), and the commentators are getting all lathered up because it's owned by Venezuelans, "whose own electoral process is suspect." Apparently, Venezuelan elections are "suspect" because they elected a leftist as president. In the meantime, there are these remaining two big American voting machine companies, ES&S & Hart, which are owned by Republican operatives and promised to deliver--and DID deliver--Ohio to Bush in 2004, and have had representatives convicted of election fraud. I don't know which one is owned by Chuck Hagel(R), but his election as Nebraska senator was done via his own company's machines, and he won handily. I didn't see any news commentators saying one word about THOSE conflicts. I support requiring all vote-counting to be done by American citizens, as opposed to machines, regardless of who those machines belong to. And I support disqualifying state or federal election officials, like Katharine Harris and the guy (Blackwell?) in Ohio, who are active in partisan politics. That ought to take care of the problem. But singling out Smartmatic because it is owned by Venezuelans is partisan, in and of itself. Cheers, Sunny Please note: message attached