— Brad Friedman
Sequoia Voting Systems has sent a legal threat to Princeton University computer science professors Ed Felten and Andrew Appel warning them of legal action should they proceed with an analysis of New Jersey’s touch-screen voting machines as unanimously recommended last week by an association representing election clerks across the state.
In a terse email sent last Friday, obtained today by The BRAD BLOG, Sequoia’s Edwin Smith, Vice-President of Compliance/Quality/Certification, warns the university academics that the company has “retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis.”
“We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property,” Smith threatens.
The email from Smith to Felten and Appel is posted in full at the end of this article. Felten has confirmed its authenticity late this afternoon.
The call by state election officials for the independent study of Sequoia’s AVC Advantage touch-screen machines comes in the wake of a recent finding that the systems mistallied voter turnout totals across at least six different counties in New Jersey’s February 5th Presidential Primary Election. During a post-election canvass, it was found that the number of voters for each party, as reported by the internal printouts on the electronic voting machines, failed to match totals on the internal memory cards inside the same systems in a number of instances across the state.
Sequoia’s explanation for the problem, essentially blaming voters and poll workers for pushing a complicated series of buttons, was found lacking by the state election clerks.
The discovery of mistallies followed on previous embarrassment for Sequoia and New Jersey when several machines failed to boot up at all on the morning of the Super Tuesday Election, causing a 45-minute delay for NJ’s Governor John Corzine before he was finally able to cast a vote at his polling place in Hoboken.
The very same Sequoia AVC Advantage systems which failed in New Jersey, will be used across Pennsylvania in that state’s upcoming — and rather important — Primary Election next month.
Sequoia has good reason to be concerned about what may come of an analysis by professors Felten and/or Appel. Both of them have previously detailed major voting machine security flaws, and the ability to easily hack into such systems made by both Sequoia and Diebold Election Systems…
Hacking “Advantage” Goes to Computer Scientists
Sequoia’s AVC Advantage system — previously described on the company’s website as “tamperproof” — is not likely to withstand independent scrutiny by skilled computer scientists such as Felten or Appel. Though it wouldn’t be the first time the company’s products, or those by the other voting machine companies, failed miserably when they were finally allowed to be probed by independent parties.
In the Summer of 2006, Felten led the team at Princeton which famously implanted a vote-flipping virus on a Diebold touch-screen voting system. The team received the machine after a Diebold-insider source of The BRAD BLOG’s gave us the machine to be passed along by the organization we co-founded, VelvetRevolution.us, to Princeton University for their analysis. The Diebold viral hack was subsequently reported widely, as live demonstrations were performed on Fox “News”, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and elsewhere.
The same team at Princeton detailed how all Diebold touch-screen systems used the same physical key — one commonly available at office supply stores, and used for filing cabinets and hotel minibars — to access any of its thousands of voting machines in use around the country.
The company was further embarrassed when working copies of the key were found to have been created by duplicating the keys from an actual photo of it which Diebold had posted on its own website.
For his part, Princeton’s Appel made headlines himself when he purchased a number of the same Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen systems as used in New Jersey off of the Internet for $86 apiece in February of 2007. He found he was then easily able to hack the systems with vote-flipping code in just minutes time.
Prior to Appel’s online purchase, the state of New Jersey had paid some $8000 a piece for the flawed systems.
At the time, Appel wrote of being “surprised at how simple it was…to access the ROM memory chips containing the firmware that controls the vote-counting.” He went on to describe Sequoia’s misleading claims that there were security seals in place to protect the chips inside the machines.
“Contrary to Sequoia’s assertions in their promotional literature,” Appel wrote, “there were no security seals protecting the ROMs. Indeed, I found that certain information in the ‘AVC Advantage Security Overview’ (from Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc., 2004) was untrue with respect to my machine.”
He went on to charge that “the AVC Advantage can be easily manipulated to throw an election” by simply removing and replacing the system’s vote-counting firmware without detection, and replacing it with fraudulent chips.
Appel’s findings followed a similar, perhaps even more embarrassing situation in Pennsylvania just prior to the 2006 Election when longtime e-voting supporter Dr. Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, accidentally hacked a Sequoia voting system while in the process of demonstrating to onlookers how the systems couldn’t be hacked. Shamos was able to instantly “transform a handful of votes into thousands,” as it was reported at the time. The vulnerability inadvertently discovered by Shamos derailed Pennsylvania’s plan to quick certify the systems for use in the state’s Primaries that year.
Later, in a remarkable finding, as reported exclusively by The BRAD BLOG just days prior to the 2006 general election, it was learned that a yellow button, found on the back of every Sequoia Edge touch-screen machine, could be pressed in such a way as to allow a voter to vote as many times as he or she liked “until physically restrained from doing so.”
New Jersey, Sequoia and the “Democrat” Party
New Jersey has been on the precipice of spending some $16 million to purchase add-on “paper trail” printers for the Sequoia touch-screen machines. The cost would reportedly be $2000 to retrofit each of the state’s 8000 Advantage systems. That purchase may be delayed or forestalled entirely depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation into the voting system failures on February 5th.
In a detailed and confusing explanation posted on the company’s website, Sequoia has found a complicated way in which they say poll workers and voters were to blame for the problems discovered on their voting machines during the recent New Jersey election.
NOTE TO SEQUOIA: You are one of the largest voting machine companies in America. You should know well by now that the major American political party which is not the Republican Party is named the Democratic Party, not the “Democrat party” as you have insultingly described them on your web page, as in where you wrote: “Let’s assume the Democrat party is assigned option switch 6 while the Republican Party is assigned option switch 12.”
The letter from Sequoia’s VP Edwin Smith to Princeton professors Andrew Appel and Ed Felten follows in full below…
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:16:21 -0600
From: Smith, Ed
To: Ed Felten; Andrew Appel]
Dear Professors Felten and Appel:
As you have likely read in the news media, certain New Jersey election officials have stated that they plan to send to you one or more Sequoia Advantage voting machines for analysis. I want to make you aware that if the County does so, it violates their established Sequoia licensing Agreement for use of the voting system. Sequoia has also retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis. We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property.
Very truly yours,
Edwin Smith
VP, Compliance/Quality/Certification
Sequoia Voting Systems
720-746-2592 office
[###-###-####] cellular
UPDATE: Livermore National Laboratory’s computer science expert David Jefferson, who has worked on a number of state e-voting studies, jumps into comments below, to point out that the decision about whether or not to commission the study of the Advantage machines in NJ will be up to AG Ann Milgram. He goes on to note:
Milgram can be contacted via phone, email, fax, snail mail etc. via this webpage.
UPDATE 3/18/08, 2:21pm PT: Sequoia’s strong-arm tactics work! NJ county backs down from planned probe. Full details now here…
The arrogance of them! By calling the Democratic party the “Democrat” party they’re wearing their political bias right on their sleeve.
Gee Folks, A good old-fashioned white collar fascist mafia-style threat. The analysis of these fucked up boxes have been effectively rigged before it even starts.
How could we make it so there’s nobody to sue?
Perhaps anonymous analysis of their “rigged to elect more fascists advantage system.”
This whole thing stinks and just pisses me off. But you knew that already. It’s so depressing that I don’t even want to post a response to this. But if everyone is as depressed as I am hearing this then nobody will fucking do something about it.
Fuck Sequoia they have no fucking rights. It’s OUR fucking constitution and OUR fucking vote and OUR fucking elections. Not theirs. These fucking fascists want to make CRIMINALS out of the white hat computer hackers. The only right Sequoia has is the right to have all their shit permanently de-certified and destroyed. The simple fact they put out a threat is evidence of them attempting to bias the outcome of the results before the cover even comes off the fucking box. Sequoia is a fascist company, spreading “fascist cancer” across America.
If I had the results of the test, I would drive by find an open WAP, fire up TOR and publish their shit world wide.
Really though, none of this shit matters. The bottom line is this.
No Electronic System of Tabulating votes can have public oversight because the public can not see electronic signals, parts can be specially crafted, or burn up, or be programmed to bias an outcome and this FASCIST COMPANY SEQUOIA (Along with any and all other electronic tabulation device manufactures) can not prove otherwise.
But yet they have a brick wall of lawyers.
I think it’s time to become self sufficient from the US government. Stop using their money, gas and bullshit and start making your own electricity, grow your own food. We ain’t gonna get no healthcare, so learn first aid.
#1, and Brad good call on the “Democrat” party. I was so pissed off I didn’t even see that.
What is the party called for citizens that are anti- PNAC/AIPAC/CFR?
Brad, I just want to correct one thing in the headline. The study that Felten and/or Appel are conducting is not “NJ commissioned” as you state in the headline. Yes, the NJ County Clerks voted to request an independent review, but they are not state officials. The relevant state official, who currently holds certification authority comparable to the SoS in other states, is New Jersey Attorney General Ann Milgram. She has not ordered any investigation and seems disinclined to. She is apparently satisfied with Sequoia’s explanation. If BradBlog readers want to help, they could write Ms. Milgram and politely impress upon her the seriousness of the problem (almost certainly a simple bug in the Advantage firmware) and ask her to support the Princeton review or commission her own independent technical review.
I might add that the Princeton scientists do not have access to the source code for the Advantage (as far as I know). They really should have that in order to do a quicker and more thorough review. Since Sequoia is obviously not cooperating, it will require the AG’s leverage to get that.
One further complication: It is my understanding that the powers of the Attorney General of NJ over voting systems will be transferred to the Secretary of State of NJ in April, so it is quite possible that AG Milgram will do nothing, and leave the problem to SoS Nina Mitchell Wells next month.
{Ed Note: Thanks for the details, David. I’ve added an update to point to your comment at the end of the original article above. Milgram can be contacted here for those inclined to do so. As to whether or not the study in question is “NJ commissioned”, I tried to be careful about my wording of that in the headline, since my understanding was that we were waiting on state officials to decide *if* they were going to commission such a study. Even though Sequoia has gone on the offensive to let them know in advance that they will take action if that were to happen. If, on the other hand, a study is commencing by Felten and/or Appel anyway, as commissioned by someone else, please let me know if you could. My understanding is that question is still up for grabs, as you seemed to note in your comment above, and thus I *tried* to be careful with the headline to that effect. If I need to clarify it, of course, I’ll be happy to. — Brad}
I was there in 2006n when Shamos “accidentally” hacked a Sequoia Advantage and make about 5 votes for a test candidate jump to over 8000. It was BAD.
I was there this past January when Northampton County PA held a Voting System Fair that led to their spending several million of our PA tax dollars to purchase of 300 used (yes, USED!) Sequoia Advantage machines to replace the decertified and now orphaned WINvote DREs. This is WORSE than bad; this is plain foolish.
We now have 737,043 registered Pennsylvania voters (using 11/07 registration figures, given the increased registrations for the Primary here this number is probably a lot higher) in two of our largest counties that will have to trust their votes next month to these junkpiles.
And in the event of trouble while voting, I guess these poor voters are not even allowed to discuss anything the machines do wrong. Because according to Smith no one is allowed to “publish” anything about the “behavior” of Sequoia’s software as that would infringe on Sequoia’s intellectual property rights???
Say WHAT???
a 4-word response is all that Sequoia need be given for their bullshit threat— “See you in Court”
–I doubt any judge, lib or con, would want to touch this, especially once the scientists show the machines failing under even rudimentary testing…much less what the boxes do once you stray into NDA-land
Justadood–
With all due respect, the courts have a poor record in ruling on lawsuits regarding voting system failures, generally siding with election officials. And besides, the courts are very slow. We have only a matter of weeks before the Pennsylvania primary in which the same machines will be used in Philadelphia, and only a few months more until the general election. This bug (and any others discovered) must be fixed. It is a much more direct and expeditious strategy to educate the relevant public officials and incentivise them to do the right thing–call for an independent technical review, and base subsequent corrective action on the results of that review. That has worked much more consistently.
And David Jefferson #7 hits the nail on the head for a home run!
This is how we are being manipulated. This is what must be stopped if we want to have a constitutional republic again.
Cause right now it’s a dictatorship.
And I am tired of it.
Tired of writing about it.
Tired of talking about it.
Let Sequoia sue. Felton and Appel should perform their tests as soon as as possible. Any lawsuit by Sequoia would just bring more public attention to how wretchedly inadequate and dangerous the machines actually are. Any jury would throw the suit out, and if we were lucky, the public would scream for indictments. That is, if there were any press at all.
Yes, let them sue.
Let the Professors begin immediately. THE LINE HAS BEEN DRAWN AND THAT IS A GOOD THING!!
Millions of Americans will stand behind the Professors along with the ACLU and many other Organizations.
START THE ANALYSIS NOW!!!
LET’S HAVE IT OUT ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
There is a quick fix, paper ballots with an open hand count of those ballots, with as many witnesses to that hand count as want to witness it.
The lawsuits, let them begin, as someone stated, the line has been drawn,and it is time we step over that bluff.
Does PA have early voting? If so, I recommend all voters go to the election headquarters and cast an ABSENTEE ballot. Do NOT use the machines!
Intellectual Property?
This is the thing I don’t get about ALL the rigged electronic voting machine stories. They always claim the need to protect their software, IP rights, …. Seriously, these are VOTING machines, literally counting one plus one. There is nothing at all complicated about it. The software used to run this blog is much more sophisticated. This doesn’t seem like a strong legal objection to me.
Democracy Now had the writer from the Times Magazine on not long ago. He said,”No scientist has proven these voting machines hackable.” I was surprised Amy Goodman didn’t correct him. Please send this post to her. She has as many viewers as Meet the Press. They are tied as #1 news programs.
The software most likely to steal elections is the BALLOT DEFINITION SOFTWARE loaded on optical ballot scanner and DRE touch-screen voting machines in county elections offices across the U.S. just before the machines are sealed with security tape and transported to election polling locations.
Ballot definition software is constructed for each election and defines the ballot positions for each candidate and proposition for each voting precinct. Miami-Dade County in Florida, for example, has 750 voting precincts and usually requires several dozen unique ballot definitions for federal general elections.
Ballot definition software creates the ballot image that people see on the screens of every brand of touch-screen voting machine. DRE touch-screen and optical ballot scan machines use ballot image coordinates, also coded in the software, to determine how finger touches on the touch-screen or marks on the paper ballot are mapped to candidate positions on the ballot. The software tabulates finger touches and marks on paper ballots as candidate votes and then stores those tabulated vote counts in the machine’s “virtual ballot box†data memory card. Ballot definition software finally tallies final election results when the polls close on election day.
All DRE touch-screen and optical ballot scanner manufacturers and vendors hold that all software, including the ballot definition software, is proprietary and confidential (secret) and may not viewed by county election officers, election judges, candidates running for office or citizen election observers. Moreover, Judges have accepted this proprietary and confidential argument. Presiding Florida Circuit Court Judge William L. Gary denied plaintiff Christine Jennings’ motion to allow review of the source code for the DRE touch-screen machines used in the contested 2006 U.S. House race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan for Florida’s 13th district.
Nearly every state still has within its election code a provision that allows public observers the right to inspect physical ballot box containers to make sure they are empty and to inspect paper ballots to make sure they are accurate and complete before the polls open on Election Day. (Example: New Hampshire Election Code Section 658:36 Inspection of Ballot Box – At the opening of the polls, the ballot box shall be publicly opened and shown to be empty; and the election officers shall ascertain that fact by a personal examination of the box. eff. July 1, 1979) Nearly every state also still has within its election code a provision that allows public observers to watch election clerks open physical ballot box containers and count the paper ballots at the end of the Election Day.
Ballot and ballot box inspection laws are on the books of every state because of the numerous historical accounts that partisans are known to have stuffed ballot boxes in a wide variety of ways.
Activist Judicial rulings that ballot definition software is proprietary and confidential to machine vendors creates new law that runs contrary to laws already on the books of nearly every state. Election law that affirm it is not only the right, but also the duty of election judges and clerks and election observers in every voting precinct to inspect paper ballots and each ballot box container to certify ballots are accurate and ballot boxes are empty!
In the November 2006 election there were 1,142 counties using DRE voting machines and 1,752 counties using optical scanners. This tabulates to 2,894 counties and 161,111 voting precincts that depend on ballot definition software written in weeks and days just before the election last November. That adds up to a lot programmers writing a lot of “last minute” ballot definition software that election officials never visually audited or comprehensively tested in the 2006 mid-term general election.
For the 2008 primary and general election season, the use of DRE touch-screen voting machines has decreased slightly while the use of optical scanners has increased over the U.S. While the numbers have shifted slightly over the past two years, the total number election jurisdictions using some type of electronic machine running ballot definition software at polling places or the central elections office for ballot tabulation continues to increase.
The task of creating ballot definition and tallying software is so large and complex that many counties contract the work to voting machine vendors or consulting/programming companies. Most vendor and consulting companies themselves do not maintain a staff of programmers large enough to write all the ballot definition software for all the voting precincts of all their county elections officer customers across the U.S. Therefore, the work is often subcontracted to yet another layer of contract programmers. These subcontractors may or may not be U.S. citizens.
Current law even allows large off-shore software consulting companies now operating in India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, or Russia to write ballot definition software.
Who checks the credentials of all these contract programmers writing “last minute” ballot software? Who asks if contract programmers work for a foreign government, other foreign interest, political party or candidate up for election or if they have criminal records? Who checks to make sure they do not have connections to a Carl Rove type political operative. Who performs detailed audits or certification testing of the software they write? The frightening answer to all questions is – no one!
Local election officials are not computer scientists nor do they even understand how vulnerable any software, particularly ballot definition software, is to inadvertent bug malfunction or malicious perversion.
The frightening truth is, local election officials often make no effort verify that ballot definition software is bug free or that someone in the software chain of custody did not nefariously insert a few extra lines of software code that activates only on election day to flip votes or rig vote totals on a central tabulator and then self delete at the end of the election day.
The more that unchecked and untested software is used in the administration of elections, the more election officials hand control of elections over to unchecked and unseen computer programmers.
It is so easy for a political partisan or foreign government to entice or direct contract programmers writing or handling ballot definition software to stuff the software ballot box as they perform their legitimate duties. Even just a few motivated partisan programmers each working independently could easily throw an election!!
Another act of the facist, neo con estabilshment. They continue to their weight around and try to stop the US return to democracy.
Its time to start the testing and estabilish a legal defense fund. Also, a countersuite against Sequoia and their executives should be started, immediately.
Wow, Michael Dean!! I could KISS you! GREAT post/ (great last name, too~!) Thank you so much…we always SUSPECTED BALLOT DEFINITION PROGRAMMING as a possible source of the bug in the CD-13 election (and others); your above observations hit me in the gut like a sad truth often does.
I was AT the TALLAHASSEE hearing, and was so devastated by Judge Gary’s derisive ruling I went to a mountain-top and drank brandy for two weeks and stared at some goats. The goats didn’t care, and I began to think, “maybe they’ve got a point…”
Michael, not sure if you’ve already seen the following video (cobbled and spliced, as we were not allowed to video tape the proceedings even though we filled out all the appropriate paperwork. We DID manage to get some video/ stills when the AP photographer–I kid you not–left because he was bored):
FL-13 HEARINGS: Evidence/ “Who Had Warehouse Access?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4acC583ZfWc
(…M.I.T. Prof. Charles Stewart presents UNHEARD TESTIMONY in the CD-13 Jennings case re: Sarasota’s undervote rate on ES&S’s iVotronic machines.)
Prof. Stewarts’ Bubble Chart, presented as evidence to the honorable(?) William L. “Google Me, I dare ya” Gary, shows that the more machines prepared leading up to election day, the higher the undervote rate.
Also see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXcyzVtMGD4
“FL-13 CATCH 22: ES&S’s Opening Misstatements”
(…and you thought the VENDORS were warped. Get a load of their LAWYERS.)
Acts of the neo cons, facsists trying to stop a return to democracy? What utter nonsense! The US is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. At least it is supposed to be a constitutional republic. Do you really think there is a dime’s worth of differnece between the repugs and the demons? They are two sides of the same coin, manipulating you to think you have a choice. Wake up, smell the tuna fish, throw off your public school education and educate yourself. Comments like Skeptic94514’s prove that the brainwashing is working.
TEST THE SOFTWARE AND TO HELL WITH THOSE EMPTY THREATS!
A little off topic but not too much since this is the blog to go to for election faults. What ever happened in NY with the 80 or so precincts which showed Obama getting 0 but then on recount showed him getting substantial amounts, in one egregious case going from 0 to 116? Were those tallies officially approved in their original count or as corrected?
Its not who votes but who counts the votes.
Is this lady a Republican?
So they want to make headlines:
That seems to indicate that Smith has an insecurity complex to go along with his superiority complex. Now that will f**k a person up really bad!
JEANNIE DEAN post #17… Thanks for your comment… I tend more toward Tennessee Whiskey, but I’m with you on that mountain-top… BTW, love the material in your act….
First, thanks to Brad for staying on top of these issues. And second, my compliments to Michael Dean on a cogent comment with regard to ballot design and the issue of conflict of laws (e.g., intellectual property rights vs. election process supervision and inspection rights). Nicely done. Would love to connect with you, Michael, off line from here. You can find me at the OSDV Foundation.
My comment is simply that this is yet another example of how we must shift from “black box voting” to “glass box voting.” It is the only way we can restore trust in the vote in an increasingly digital democracy.
To do so requires complete transparency in design, development, and production of the machinery that serves as a cornerstone of our democracy. A mandate of open source methods in both hardware and software is an imperative start. Such work must become a digital public works, and the results held in the public trust.
I also wanted to compliment David Jefferson’s comments here. They are spot-on as I mentioned in my post on Brad’s reporting.
Gregory Miller comment #24… Greg, I sent my contact info via your OSDV Foundation “Contact Us” msg form. Michael
Wish to share in the kudos for Michael Dean’s original note above which, frankly, deserves to be it’s own BRAD BLOG Guest Blog.
Will touch base w/ you in that regard, Michael.
While the numbers have shifted slightly over the past two years, the total number election jurisdictions using some type of electronic machine running ballot definition software at polling places or the central elections office for ballot tabulation continues to increase.