Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Automark and Avante

this post is an effort to find out who is who. Where are these companies operating? Where are their products adopted and certified for use? Who owns stock in these companies, and so forth and so on... where do they testify? The following was obtained from net searches using Google and different key terms.

Example

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22kevin+chung%22+avante+international+vote+trakker&btnG=Search


April 15, 2003

http://www.sos.nh.gov/HAVA/voting%20machines%20trade%20fair%20report.htm

Kevin Chung tesifies May 5, 2004

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:7BAPAkOHhu0J:www.eac.gov/News/meetings/050504/ploneexfile.2006-04-18.0069532065/attachment_download/file+%22kevin+chung%22+%22rush+holt%22+science+avante+international&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

More

http://www.eac.gov/election/practices/bpea/ack

web references

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Chung_Kevin_22506100.aspx

Kevin Chung visits seminar Princeton 2004

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall04/frs125/schedule.html

June 8, 2006
Small Business
A Foot in the Door of the Voting Booth
By ELLEN ROSEN
With midterm elections only months away, state and local officials nationwide are in the midst of a somewhat troubled transition to electronic voting systems. Two newcomers hope that the security and reliability problems that have emerged will give them a leg up.

The upstarts — AutoMark Technical Systems and Avante International Technology — evolved from the inspiration of two entrepreneurs. AutoMark began with Eugene M. Cummings, a Chicago patent lawyer who conceived a system to assist the disabled in voting. Avante sprang from the persistence of a New Jersey entrepreneur, Kevin Chung, who devised an electronic voting system after he witnessed the troubled presidential election of 2000.

For these men, the immersion in a new and largely unfamiliar industry has been something of a quixotic journey. "We earned our M.B.A. the hard way," said Joseph Vanek, another Chicago lawyer who is co-founder of AutoMark. "But we conceived an idea, made a product and brought it to market."...

...Still, the obstacles were many. Mr. Chung had no experience in the field — his company, Avante International Technology, based in Princeton Junction, N.J., produces electronics adhesives and has experience in the smart card industry. Revenue, Mr. Chung says, is about $10 million.

Undeterred, he filed a patent application for such a machine within days of the election. Then, using savings and company resources, he hired two engineering firms for a bakeoff to see which could turn his idea into a more concrete proposal.

By March 2001, the company had a prototype that allowed voters to see the entire ballot along with a paper record that confirmed their choices. Shortly afterward, his company's representatives, lugging the machines, hit the field to demonstrate what it calls a full-face ballot touch screen to local political leaders and the public.

"We went almost five years without any income — everyone in my company hated me," Mr. Chung said. "I had anticipated some problems, but five years is a long time."

The company finally met with some success in 2005, when it won its first contract, from Warren County, N.J...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/business/08sbiz.html?pagewanted=print


E-Voting Machines Exposed by Task Force

By KIMBERLY FELICIANO
In late June, the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, an initiative of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, released a report and policy proposals concluding that all three of the nation’s most commonly purchased electronic voting systems are vulnerable to software attacks that could threaten the integrity of a state or national election. Those three are electronic machines (DREs) with—and without—a voter verified paper trail, and precinct-counted optical scan systems (PCOS).

The Task Force spent more than a year conducting the analysis and drafting The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World. The methodology, analysis, and text were “extensively peer reviewed” by the National Institute of Standards and Technology...

Photo

Kevin Chung, CEO of AVANTE International Technology developed an e-voting machine that prints a paper record. Partnered with Dell Computer, Arrow Electronics, and Microsoft E-Government System, they offer to provide California with all 10,000 units for this year’s election.

http://www.fourthbranchofamerica.com/voting_machines_exposed.shtml


Avante Optical Vote Trakker

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:-6zWhrHgbcgJ:www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/lobby_packet%2520wd%2520-%2520FINAL1.pdf+%22kevin+chung%22+rush+holt+avante+international+board+directors&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

Avante International Technology Corporation Files Suit Against Use of Paper Trail Printer, Op Scan Technology by Voting Machine Giants

BLOGGED BY John Gideon ON 7/12/2006 12:54PM

Inventor of Electronic Voting Verification System Takes Industry Giants to Court for Patent Infringement

Wednesday July 12, 11:19 am ET

SimmonsCooper Files Lawsuit on Behalf of AVANTE International Technology Corporation

EAST ALTON, Ill., July 12 /PRNewswire/ --- SimmonsCooper LLC has filed a lawsuit against the three largest voting machine manufacturers for infringing AVANTE International Technology Corporation's Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and optical scan patents.

Named in the suit are Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), and Sequoia Voting Systems. The suit was filed on behalf of Kevin Chung, CEO of Avante International Technology Corporation, Inc., who invented VVPAT.

AVANTE's VVPAT and optical scanning (which includes automatic ballot marking) patents allow voters to verify that their electronically-cast ballots are being accurately counted while also allowing for auditability between the paper record and the electronic record.

The AVANTE technology directly addresses widespread skepticism about the integrity of electronic voting, solving a problem that has threatened to undermine public faith in a process tainted in recent elections by allegations of computer manipulation.

"AVANTE isn't the only victim here," said Paul Lesko, the SimmonsCooper lawyer representing AVANTE...


http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3061


Business Point of View: A Better Voting System

...Avante now awaits what may be its first major order from its home state of New Jersey in the pending RFQ. New Jersey has been given millions of dollars of federal funds to update its voting systems in all 21 counties to meet the mandate of the 2002 enacted "Help America Vote Act." Almost all of the current voting systems in New Jersey do not meet the HAVA mandates.

Besides pioneering the making and usage of a voting system with a "paper record audit trail" that is voter verified, Avante also pioneered the first online voter registration system that captures biometric digitized signature. The captured biometric digitized signature not only reduces the memory requirement to 300 bytes from 50 Kbytes of typical digitized signature from paper, it is a patented technology that can play back the signing motion like a movie (minus the presence of the person of course). Any layman or judge can view the movie to verify if someone actually signed the document.

Avante is now working with partners such as Dell, Computer Associates, etc. in bidding on a contract for the State of New Jersey to provide a uniform Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) that will eliminate duplicate voter registration as well as provide better voter assistance. Any voter can print out a map to their polling place or preview the layout of the polling place in pictures. Voters can be assured of their data's privacy better than all other states' SVRS if the New Jersey chooses to use the Avante system that provide an optional biometric digitized signature authentication before any election official can log onto the database.

http://www.princetoninfo.com/200410/41027f01.html


Tags for Goats, Pills, and Key Chains
Think RFID tags for goats, pills, and key chains. Kevin Chung of Avante Technologies on Washington Road is riding the RFID bandwagon by selling tags to the United States Department of Agriculture for $2 per goat. His tags also help the Food and Drug Administration prevent drug counterfeits. And every year he sells from 1 million to 3 million loyalty card chips in key fobs to private companies. His website touts using RFID to monitor which conventioneers attend which seminars and which drugs a patient has taken.

"RFID is an exciting area and it has a lot of potential applications," says Chung, "but it is not a full grown business. We started quite a few years ago. We are not the biggest guy playing in this area but we have a lot of patents." Chung predicts RFID technology will explode in 2006 now that Wal-Mart has finished its beta testing and manufacturers are primed and ready to go.

Chung went to Rutgers, Class of 1974, and earned his PhD from Rutgers as well. After working for RCA he founded his firm in 1985 and moved to this location seven years ago; he has 50 employees. His wife, Cynthia Chu, is also a principal in the firm, and they have two grown children.

Currently he devotes only 20 percent of the business to RFID. One of his companies, AI Technologies, manufactures materials for the computer, communications, and power supply industries; it also provides services to these industries. Among the products are films, pastes, and gels that guard against heat, the great enemy of computers and other electronic products. AIT also manufactures adhesives and epoxy materials that can substitute for solder. Under the company name Avante International Technologies, Chung has developed a voting machine, Vote Trakker, that issues paper records for verification (U.S. 1, October 27, 2004).

http://www.princetoninfo.com/200511/51109c02.html


Rep. Rush Holt

Rush Holt, 59, is a resident of Hopewell Township, N.J. Born in West Virginia he inherited his interest in politics from his parents. His father was the youngest person ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate, at age 29. His mother served as Secretary of State of West Virginia and was the first woman to have held that position.

Rep. Holt earned his B.A. in Physics from Carleton College in Minnesota and completed his Master’s and Ph.D. at NYU. He has held positions as a teacher, Congressional Science Fellow, and arms control expert at the U.S. State Department where he monitored the nuclear programs of countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. From 1989 until he launched his 1998 congressional campaign, Holt was Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the largest research facility of Princeton University and the largest center for research in alternative energy in New Jersey. He has conducted extensive research on alternative energy and has his own patent for a solar energy device. Holt was also a five-time winner of the game show “Jeopardy.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-rush-
holt

Felten E-voting hack fuels pre-election debate (Rush Holt mentioned)

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:2Tc1C0sq2DQJ:engineering.princeton.edu/eqnews/EQN_W06.pdf+rush+holt+princeton+plasma+kevin+chung&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

April 17, 1997

Session A4. FED, FPS: Trends in Federal Support of Science Education. Stephens, Weimer, Vanski, Wheeler. Auditorium, Renaissance. Chair: Rush Holt, Princeton University Plasma

http://flux.aps.org/meetings/YR97/BAPSAPR97/Program.html

... high5, Stockholm said on 7/16/2006 @ 2:43 am PT...




or, this is just another clever psy-op making people beleive the shit about paper trails securing anything.

This is what gives it away:

AVANTE's VVPAT and optical scanning (which includes automatic ballot marking) patents allow voters to verify that their electronically-cast ballots are being accurately counted while also allowing for auditability between the paper record and the electronic record.

Anyone heard of Avante before?

http://test.bradblog.com/?p=3061

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