Offshore Company Captures Online Military Vote
by Lynn Landes
7/16/03
Last year, while President Bush marshaled U.S. forces for the invasion of Iraq, the patriots at the Department of
Defense awarded the contract for a new online voting system for the military... to an offshore company.
It gets worse.
Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is the system and Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting
of Enron bankruptcy fame) is the company. And although Accenture has not been officially implicated in the Enron
scandal, they have created a reputation of their own that is already raising eyebrows.
This is hot off the newswire -- "7/15/03 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Accenture Ltd., the former Andersen Consulting, disclosed Tuesday that it might have
violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Chairman and CEO Joe Forehand, on an earnings call with analysts and
reporters Tuesday, said the consulting firm's Middle East operations could be in non-compliance with the Act, which
prohibits the bribery of foreign government officials by U.S. persons."
The Canada-based Polaris Institute published a scathing report on Accenture, saying, "Accenture's efforts in government
outsourcing have often been very expensive and/or of poor quality. There is good reason to question Accenture's track
record in outsourcing of government services."
Accenture is the leading offshore beneficiary of government contracts whose main business is the privatization of
government services, according to Lee Drutman of Citizen Works, a non-profit founded by Ralph Nader. Accenture has a
troubling track record, a close business relationship with Dick Cheney's Halliburton, and 2500 partners - more than half
are not U.S. citizens.
Since 2001 Accenture and Election.com have been strategic partners "to jointly deliver comprehensive election solutions
to governments worldwide," according to their press release. Last month Accenture bought the public-sector election
assets of Election.com, which suffered its own scandal this year when it was discovered that Osan Ltd, a firm of Saudi
and other foreign investors, bought controlling interest in it. According to Mark Harrington of NewsDay.com, "Several
shareholders of the company said they were surprised by the recent buyout and have asked for securities regulators to
investigate."
Election.com has had other problems. In January 2003, during Canada's New Democratic Party leadership convention, the
Canadian Broadcasting System reported, “Earl Hurd of Election.com said he believes someone used a "denial of service"
program to disrupt the voting – paralyzing the central computer by bombarding it with a stream of data”…service was
restored, then… "Toronto city councilor Jack Layton's victory on the first ballot surprised many, who had expected a
second or even third round of voting before a leader was chosen from the pack of six candidates."
For election security experts, a strong and growing suspicion is that computer glitches or disruptions are actually vote
rigging. A surprise election result should raise a red flag.
Accenture is big. It has more than 75,000 employees in 47 countries, and generated net revenues of $11.6 billion for the
fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2002. On their Board of Directors is Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO and known to many as Bad
Boy Ballmer for his ruthless, if not illegal, business practices. Microsoft has been sued by the federal government and
several states for monopolistic business practices which were designed to destroy their competition. Massachusetts’s
Attorney General is still pursuing Microsoft. In March 13, 2000 Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and Microsoft signed
a "$1 Billion Pact To Form Joint Venture and Expand Global Alliance." What's the alliance? To control voting systems
around the world?
A sense of civic duty isn't high on Accenture's list of priorities. According to an article last year in
TheDailyEnron.com, "Accenture is lobbying furiously on Capitol Hill to defeat a measure that would deny federal
contracts to US companies that move offshore to escape US taxes. Accenture, you see, has incorporated in Bermuda. But,
Accenture also holds nearly $1 billion in government contracts in the US. The company earned nearly $700 million last
year working for Uncle Sam and - ironically - is currently under contract with the Internal Revenue Service itself to
redesign its online and Internet operations."
Then there’s the Accenture connection to Halliburton, vice president Dick Cheney’s former employer. Halliburton is
widely criticized for doing business with brutal regimes and was the subject of a SEC investigation and several lawsuits
surrounding their accounting practices during and after Cheney’s tenure at the helm. The Polaris Institute says that in
July 2000 David Lesar succeeded Dick Cheney as Chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company. Before joining Halliburton,
Lesar was employed by the Arthur Andersen, Accenture's former parent company. Polaris says, "…while defending
Halliburton's accounting practices, David Lesar publicly acknowledged that Cheney knew about the firm's accounting
practices..."
In an October 2001 press release, Halliburton and Accenture announced a major expansion of their longstanding
relationship with the signing of an alliance between Accenture and Landmark Graphics Corporation, a wholly owned
business unit of Halliburton.
And unlike the words of the U.S. military's anthem, "I'm proud to be an American”, Accenture owes its allegiance to
"partners" outside of the USA.
In a letter to the editor of the Austin Chronicle last year, Accenture's Director of Corporate Communications, Roxanne
Taylor wrote, "When Accenture's parent company, Accenture Ltd., was first incorporated last year, the organization's
2,500 partners, more than half of whom are non-U.S. citizens, decided to incorporate in Bermuda. With thousands of
partners and employees of many nationalities, it was important commercially and culturally for the organization to
select a neutral location such as Bermuda for its parent company.”
How very global of them.
Potentially, 6 million U.S. military and civilian voters could soon be using the military's new online voting system.
According to computer voting security experts, any online system will be easy to rig by company insiders and vulnerable
to attack by outsiders. Apart from that reality, does the U.S. military really want a company owned by non-U.S. citizens
in charge of their vote?
Can anyone at the Pentagon spell "national security"?
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- Lynn Landes is a freelance journalist at http://EcoTalk.org. Formerly Lynn was a radio show host, a regular commentator for a BBC radio program, and environmental news reporter
for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. (215) 629-3553 / lynnlandes@earthlink.net