Americans need to be “wary of asymmetrical threats from hostile entities no matter what the size,” Investor’s Business Daily says in an editorial. “We might just get ambushed again if the Venezuelan government ends up controlling our elections.”
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) would send the editorial to Treasury Secretary John Snow with a request that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) investigate Smartmatic’s purchase of Sequoia Voting Systems. Maloney called it a national security threat.
“Don’t think it can’t happen,” IBD editors write. “A Venezuelan-linked company called Smartmatic has bought out a U.S. electronic voting device firm called Sequoia, which holds contracts for elections in Chicago and elsewhere.”
So far, CFIUS has not probed the takeover. “U.S. foreign investment bureaucrats aren’t worried because no military secrets are involved,” says IDB. “But that kind of thinking can blindside our democratic institutions as we look for threats to our hardware”.
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the foremost meddler in foreign elections in the Western hemisphere and has been accused of secretly financing candidates in Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Mexico. Why wouldn’t he be interested in influencing vote outcomes here?
“He’s already trying to influence our politics through a congressional lobbying effort and a cheap fuel program for welfare recipients explicitly linked to congressional participation,” the editors say.
“There may be no problem with Smartmatic working U.S. elections, but just wait for a close call and see how credible the result will be. With as many problems as U.S. elections have seen, the one thing it doesn’t need is to import Venezuela’s electoral wreckage.”
Source:
“Hugo wants your vote,” Editorial, Investor’s Business Daily, April 20, 2006, part of Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s CFIUS package to Treasury Secretary John Snow,
1. Letter_to_Sec_Dep_Treasury_CarolynMaloney.pdf
1. Was Smartmatic’s purchase of Sequoia an attempt by the Chavez regime, and even its Cuban, Chinese, Russian, and Iranian allies, to manipulate American elections as it had been doing elsewhere in the Americas? Or, in the words of Congresswoman Maloney, for Venezuela to export its “electoral wreckage”?
2. Why did CFIUS settle for investigating the purchase of Sequoia Voting Systems and not try to dig deeper into the ways that a Venezuelan-linked company like Smartmatic could use its technology to conduct foreign malign influence and political subversion operations across the United States?
3. How can national security authorities be so naive as not to be able to detect, let alone be aware of, potentially more sophisticated threats coming from a hostile bloc of regimes like Venezuela, China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia?
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