Broward Shell Game (FL - voting)

[phoebe]

playing the race card..

by the way American Medical Depot was given an award by Jeb Bush and is the LONE contractor for the ENTIRE Navy for medical supplies amongst other things..

It wasn't Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant who done the county wrong but the County Commission itself
BY WYATT OLSON


For almost a year, the Broward State Attorney's Office investigated Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant for violating the statutes that govern her office. Late last month, investigators concluded that there had been misconduct: not by Oliphant but by the Broward County Commission. Oliphant may have been guilty of being a lousy administrator, investigators said, but the commission blatantly disregarded a county ordinance designed to break the lock on public contracts by white contractors.

In administering a county deal to purchase and install touch-screen voting machines from Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S) in the fall of 2001, county officials used a kind of sophisticated shell game to give the appearance of minority participation in the lucrative $17.2 million contract, according to state documents obtained by New Times. The commission funneled $750,000 to a "minority subcontractor," an Asian-owned medical supply company. The medical supply firm was to manufacture voting booths for the county but simply passed money along to a nonminority firm that did the actual work.

snip

In August, the commission selected ES&S, which would supply about 5,000 machines for $17.2 million. ES&S agreed to satisfy the 10 percent requirement through $1.7 million in subcontracts with four minority-owned companies. One of those companies, D.C. Miller and Associates, was slated to receive $908,000 for voting booths, voter outreach, and media coverage.

snip

The County Commission approved the $17.2 million contract with ES&S on December 11, which earmarked $878,000 for AMD. Faced with criticism from the media, Corwin defended AMD 's proposed work of inspecting, assembling, and testing the booths and voting machines. Corwin skirted the obvious fact that the medical company would simply pass $750,000 to a nonminority manufacturer. This appeared flagrant to Commissioner Graber, and he wrote to then-commission Chairwoman Lori Parrish, "This vendor is not . This essentially constitutes a pass-through of nearly $750,000, which is the same as brokering, a violation of our ordinance."

more
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2003-09-25/news.html/1/index.html