After he received an unsolicited job offer from ES&S last October to manage its California operations, Dedier said, he immediately notified his superior. But it was just before the Voting Systems Panel -- which he advised -- was to pass judgment on a competing company's touch-screen system.
The matter was further complicated because the company, Avante International, had been selected for a Sacramento County pilot election only a few days away.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday November 13, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 31 words Type of Material: Correction
Voting machines -- An article in Monday's Section A about voting machine companies hiring former government officials misspelled the surname of former Sacramento mayor and state Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg as Eisenberg.
Dedier was asked to hold off for a few days before accepting the job with ES&S, and was allowed to make his recommendation to the panel -- that Avante could handle the Sacramento balloting but that a decision on statewide certification should be deferred.
Avante representatives, however, were upset when they found that Dedier was taking a job with a competitor. "It seemed like a conflict to us," said James Minadeo, technical support manager for Avante.
Dedier said recently that he had not only handled the matter fairly, but that he had taken extra steps to get Avante certified, which occurred conditionally in December after the Sacramento election went well. And Ernest Hawkins, former Sacramento County registrar, vouched for Dedier's impartiality.
Stern, a former counsel to the FPPC and the secretary of state, said officials had created an appearance problem by failing to disclose Dedier's job offer. "The more openness, the better off you are," he said.
One critic of Dedier's move was Deborah Seiler of Diebold Election Systems, who said it had raised ethical and conflict-of-interest issues.
Seiler herself had gone through the government-to-industry revolving door.
After serving as chief of elections under longtime Secretary of State March Fong Eu, she went into the elections industry in 1991 after working in the state Legislature for a year. She said she has worked hard to build trust among elections officials and acknowledged, "There's no question these contacts are helpful" in the intense competition to sell new equipment.
She also is the chairwoman of a subcommittee of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials, which is working on revisions of the election code. And that role has caused competing vendors to complain about her special status.
"When she went to work for the vendor, she was just one of us, and she just continued," said Hawkins, who was long active in the organization.
"I wasn't selling any products," Seiler said. "It was a labor of love."
