24130: Beckett (reply) Re: 24126: Severe (reply): RE: 24050: Election costs, etc... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Beckett <beckett@uchicago.edu>

Elections tend to get expensive in places like Haiti or Iraq, in part
because they are contracted out to a growing number of private firms.
One that operates in Haiti, and has for years in the guise of building
civil society, is International Foundation for Electoral Systems
(IFES). You can find them at www.ifes.org. They have been a
subcontractor for USAID in Haiti in the past. According to their
website, one of the key services/goods they provide is "election
solutions," including the machines themselves. Note, of course, that
they sell the machines directly, and that they are one of the emerging
companies seeking to get contracts to supply digital/electronic voting
machines -- the kind that leave behind NO paper trace. (So much for
transparency.)

I am not sure of the current status of the CEP these days, but from
what I know, back in 2004 (after February 29), Francois Benoit (on the
CEP) proposed a national electronic election plan that would cost over
$100 million, partly because the plan called for the purchase of
expensive electronic equipment ("election solutions").

There are no doubt lots of hidden costs that someone like me (who has
very little experience with elections, save for voting in them) has no
real idea of. But I think one of the reasons that elections get so
expensive in Haiti, as elsewhere, is that the business of
democracy-building and nation-building is just that -- a business. And
it is an increasingly big one.