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?

Filed Under: e-voting, fake votes, washington dc, write-ins