All is changed utterly after Florida vote debacle

Following the debacle over Florida's voting system in November's presidential election, US states have been looking for ways to bring their antiquated election procedures into the 21st century. The process may involve total outlay of up to $8 billion (€8.7 billion) according to one estimate, and could be a windfall for the Jefferson Smurfit Group.

A closely-watched election was held last week for an assembly seat in Riverside County, California, the largest to have converted to touch-screen voting. The equipment was provided by SequoiaPacific Voting Equipment Inc, a wholly-owned Smurfit subsidiary and one of about five companies which have the capacity to provide an electronic voting system. The assembly district covered part of San Bernardino County which uses old-style punch cards.

Both systems worked well but the difference was that the Riverside results came in at super speed. Using Sequoia's machines Riverside had counted and reported all districts 77 minutes after polls closed whereas San Bernardino took more than 15 hours.

Sequoia is run by Mr Peter Cosgrove, a Dubliner in his mid 30s who moved to California with his wife Liz and four children two years ago as chief executive of Smurfit Packaging Corp based in San Francisco. Sequoia machines eliminate the whole process of hanging, dimpled and pregnant chads. The company's touch screens work with a voter card and a screen like an ATM cash dispenser. They are plugged into the wall and not hooked to a central network open to hackers. They prevent voting for two candidates while allowing the voter to change his or her mind. They can also be programmed for different languages.

New York, which uses 40-year-old lever machines, already prints ballots in four languages, English, Spanish and two Chinese dialects, and is likely to add Korean after the next census. Before November New York shied away from electronic voting after initial interest. It entered into a $60 million contract with Sequoia in the mid 90s but changed its mind and settled amicably with Sequoia. New York is ripe for change, said Mr Cosgrove.

Florida has changed everything. The Smurfit-owned company has sold more than 20,000 of its Direct Record Electronic voting machines to other districts, including Baltimore, Maryland. It is likely to pick up some more business from the favourable publicity generated by the Riverside vote. "Punch card and lever voting represents 60 per cent of the US market which is a huge market and these systems are going to have to be changed anyway," said Mr Cosgrove yesterday. "The pace of change from punch card to lever will be significantly increased."

Sequoia is the leading company in electronic voting, with 70 per cent of installation and electronic voting since 1995.

The touch-screen system is the "racehorse" of the field, said Riverside County's registrar of voters, "and the equipment has served us well."

The big attraction for state officials is the savings in paper costs. By going electronic in November Riverside saved $600,000 in printing bills and expects that the machines will pay for themselves in nine years. Voting equipment is still such a tiny piece of Smurfit's business it would be unlikely to affect the stock price.

Smurfit is more concerned with the downturn in the US economy which has hit its US packaging business. Cardboard, first used in England as a liner for top hats, is used everywhere in the US, from packaging pizzas and books to computers and air conditioners. With 20 per cent of the market, SmurfitStone Container Corporation is the biggest box-maker in the US. Corrugated paper is a key indicator of the economy. As it heats up more boxes are needed. The demand for linerboard - the top and bottom layers of corrugated material - increases, new linerboard machines are installed, then demand falls, inventories pile up and the price of linerboard plummets.

Mr Ray Curran, Smurfit president and CEO blames a strong dollar for the drop in US manufacturing activity and domestic packaging demand. "We need a weaker dollar to generate the economic stimulus to revitalise containerboard demand," he said. Alan Greenspan please note.