LAST MONTH, Sequoia Voting Systems, the nation’s third-largest electronic voting machine maker, announced that the company had been sold to private U.S. investors. This would be an unremarkable transaction except that the seller, Smartmatic Corporation, is a Venezuelan-owned company close to the government of Hugo Chávez. And the sale was forced by a belated investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). But for the unprecedented unwinding of Smartmatic’s ownership–which almost did not happen–Chávez would be in a position to influence the outcome of next year’s presidential election.