Sequoia E-Voting Equipment Allowed Thousands Of Fake Write-In Votes
from the don't-you-feel-great-about-our-upcoming-election? dept
Just this week, we pointed to a rather graphic demonstration of how easy it is to hack an election using Sequoia's e-voting machines. Sequoia's machines have been implicated in numerous problematic elections, such as vote totals in New Jersey that don't add up properly, or the discovery that with a little effort you can vote multiple times on some Sequoia machines. And, of course, Sequoia's usual response to these sorts of things is to deny any and all responsibility and maybe even threaten to sue those who discover the problems.Well, here they go again. In a Washington DC primary election that used Sequoia's machines, election officials are trying to deal with the fact that the machines seem to have added thousands of votes for a non-existent write-in candidate. The election board is blaming a "faulty cartridge" (though no one seems to know what that means, exactly). Sequoia, however, denies a faulty cartridge or a faulty database and says that it must be human error or maybe "static discharge." You would think that a company like Sequoia would be quite concerned that its machines could change the course of democracy based on static discharge or basic human error, but it seems more concerned with avoiding any blame:
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with the database," said Michelle Shafer, spokeswoman for California-based Sequoia Voting Systems. "There's absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No."There. Now, doesn't that make you feel oh-so-confident in the ability of these machines to conduct a free and fair democratic election for President this November?
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Filed Under: e-voting, fake votes, washington dc, write-ins
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wow
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wow again
"There are multiple possibilities for failure to properly read the cartridge data," according to Sequoia's statement.
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I vote for the static canidate
This is scary.
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bottom line those machines aren't reliable whether its human error, static discharge, bad faulty cartridges, human error or just plain bad code.
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another excuse
My guess is that the excuse is total bullshit.
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Add this to the list
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Re:
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Another one with Sequoia voting machines
Will it ever end?
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And are you implying that no member of the Republican Party has a high level of technological competence on purpose?
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"static discharge" = the machines are taking over
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But I don't think that small errors are such a big deal. If we have two leading candidates separated by let's say 10% either of them could end up in the office without being it a disaster.
In my opinion democracy is not meant to decide such close competitions, its meant to exclude those guys with 5%.
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You are most likely a troll. If not, I feel sorry for you.
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Since when are geeks hackers and anarchists democrats? I would think that anarchists in many ways are the opposite of democrats. In my experience, most members of both parties are honest, down to earth, good folks. And there's also an equal number of dishonest win-at-any-cost liars in both parties. Saying that one is somehow more "honest" and "down to earth" is hard to believe.
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Re: 10%
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Bush won because Kerry was and is a turd and many people in the US are a hell of a lot smarter than you.
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Paper ballots have been used since the US was formed, and under the proper scrutiny, are much harder to beat than the very poorly designed e-voting systems. Must be a bunch of code jockeys from New Delhi writing the code for these crappers.
Some things just don't benefit from whiz bang tech, and voting is one of them
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Why not sue?
It's obvious the machines don't work as advertised. Hell, at a minimum someone should be able to sue for false advertising.
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Re: Why not sue?
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slot machines
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If this is a back-handed comment on the religious stance of either party, then I'll bold my previous comment: we are talking about POLITICS here.
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Re: slot machines
I wonder what that says about me? I wonder what that says about Sequota and Diebold?
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and?
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Excuse Me! India has a full-proof Electronic voting system for years, and It certainly hasn't malfunctioned....
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Options
If we believe Varun that India has fool proof Electronic voting systems (I don't, personally...because if it's technological, and it's for a big enough election, someone is going to hack it) then what are they using?
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Open Source Voting Machines
Everything would be open to public scrutiny. This way the best and brightest in computer and systems security and the worlds best hackers can have at it and find the flaws in the systems. When local jurisdictions find flaws, there would be no incentive for the vendors to hide design flaws.
If one vendor is screwing up quality, you could take the open source design to another vendor.
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there are other ways the election is being stolen
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Quacks Like a Duck
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I agree with you on open sourcing the voting machines but it is weird that you choose OpenSSL as an example because a major hole was found in it this year. Although to open source defense it was fixed promptly.
I think that these electronic voting machines can remove some human error but are more exploitable. My proposal is to have open source electronic voting machines that print out every individuals vote so that they may review it before they hand it in. This way we can have recounts if needed and this system would be hard to exploit because of a clear print out. You can't hack dead trees.
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