John Gideon briefly noted what happened in Florida in yesterday’s Daily Voting News, but it deserves a bit more attention. A lot more attention, actually.
A recent contested election for Circuit Judge in Palm Beach County, FL, where the initial results showed a 17 vote margin for one of the candidates, continues to reveal differing counts every time the same ballots are run through the county’s new optical-scan paper ballot counters made by Sequoia Voting Systems.
Sequoia is one of America’s largest private voting machine vendors, and one of its worst (even though we realize such judgements are akin to determing whether Mussolini was worse than Stalin.) Just 30-some days from America’s next and likely-largest election ever, the desperate company is under fire today for recent voting system failures in Palm Beach, Washington D.C., and New Jersey.
For the moment, let’s look at what was reported out of Palm Beach yesterday, where re-scans of 262 rejected ballots on Sequoia paper-ballot scanners revealed differing results each and every time they were scanned…
As part of a challenge to a disputed judicial race, elections officials tested two Sequoia 400-C counting machines to see how they handled ballots they previously rejected as either over- or under-votes.
…
Wednesday’s tests were simple. Election workers took 262 ballots previously rejected by the machines as over- or under-votes in the judicial race and ran them through two machines. All of them should have been rejected again in the tests.
That didn’t happen.
On the first two tests of 160 ballots, the machines accepted three ballots as good votes. On tests on 102 more ballots that should have been rejected, the machines first accepted 13 ballots as good votes and then 90 on a second run.
To be clear: The failed Sequoia voting systems are electronic paper-ballot scanners, made by a private company which does not allow the public election officials who use them to determine the results of public elections or any independent, public examination of the hardware or software of the systems.
The same type of proprietary voting systems are used to count ballots in every state in the nation. Results of ballots “counted” on them are typically accepted by officials, the media, and the public as accurate, and are almost never double-checked, in any way, shape or form, to determine whether the computer-reported results actually are.
Sequoia is currently in court in New Jersey fighting to keep the results of a court-ordered independent test of its failed New Jersey machines from being made public, even though — as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively last May — the company doesn’t even own the intellectual property rights to the voting systems, as it is claiming in that case.
“Even the Governor and the Secretary of State of New Jersey are not permitted, by the Court’s order, to read this report in order to inform their policy making,” wrote Andrew Appell yesterday. He was one of the Princeton University computer scientists who carried out the court-ordered analysis of the NJ Sequoia machines which misreported vote totals during this year’s Super Tuesday primary in a number of counties.
Appell, an expert witness for the citizen plaintiffs in the case, and the leader of the scientific analysis team, goes on to note that despite Sequoia not even being a party to the case, and despite the team of experts unwillingness to examine the “machines under conditions that prevent public discussion of their findings,” the judge in the case made a remarkable u-turn this week from her ruling last Summer that allowed for the public disclosure of all findings. Those findings, completed and turned in to the court weeks ago, are being held following oral argument in which Sequoia — which, we’ll repeat, is not a party in the case — “grossly mischaracterized” the report of the computer scientists, according to Appell.
Meanwhile, Back in Florida…
To his candidate’s and the voters’ credit, following the recent tests of those ballots in Florida, the attorney for one of the candidates in the Palm Beach contest now says the machines cannot be trusted.
Attorney Gerald Richman told the Sun-Sentinel, “We have to get a new election or a hand recount.”
The paper goes on to highlight the problem with relying on a few private vendors to handle every election in the United States of America…
If election officials ran their own elections, with completely transparent citizen oversight, they wouldn’t have to wait for private company employees to “come down and correct whatever the problem is” (as if anybody would know if it was actually corrected after they got done with it.) They also wouldn’t have to go to court, only to be told they’re not allowed to see what went wrong in their very own elections.
Sequoia was otherwise very busy today anyway, with its top executives answering questions at a public meeting about similarly failed machines in Washington D.C., where thousands of “phantom votes” were added to the results of an election in last month’s primary.
Sequoia has said the reason that 1,500 non-existent write-in votes were reported by their voting system, in a precinct where just 326 people cast votes, was most likely due to “static electricity.”
Yeah. That’s what they actually said. Feel better?
And if you’re wondering, since we get the same question every time we write such an article, no, Obama and the DNC are doing absolutely nothing about any of this.
[NOTE: Will your candidate take the pledge to not concede an election until all ballots this year are known to have actually been counted and counted accurately? On tonight’s Mike Malloy Show (which we are Guest Hosting this week), we’ll have as one of our guests the only Presidential candidate so far who has been willing to take that pledge. It’s your democracy, and therefore your responsibility, to make sure that your candidate, whoever it is, does similarly!]
“There is something we can do about it.”
Question is WILL YOU FUCKING DO IT?
This is such a well-laid-out post detailing a perfect example of precisely why electronic voting or counting in any form should be immediately scrapped. Keep ’em coming!
Scary that all these companies back the Republican candidates. They will do anything to steal this election, even blaming STATIC electricity.
Triumph,
Actually, static electricity is known to mess up electronic functions. In my other life in research, we counted not votes but radioactive decay, and it boiled down to having to wear cotton underwear when loading the samples into the counter! (Nylon underwear caused spurious counts due to, yep, static electricity!)
But what is even more mind-boggling to me, is why we accept electronic counting at all, with the errors, mishaps, bunglings, and just plain ordinary screw-ups, never mind the deliberate manipulations. How much brainwashing had to happen for that kind of unquestioning acceptance?
I live in Palm Beach County and we’re fed up. Has anybody read the California public report on same machine: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/ttbr/red_sequoia.pdf
Here’s conclusion: “Although, we did not have enough time to perform a complete evaluation of the Sequoia voting system,we exposed a number of serious security issues. These vulnerabilities could be exploited by a determined attacker to modify (or invalidate) the results of an election.
All the attacks described in this report can be carried out without any knowledge of the source code. In fact, we were able to extract and analyze the Edge’s firmware binary representation. In addition, we were able to extend the firmware by using binary patching. This technique allowed us to create a “debuggingâ€
version of the firmware, as well as several different “malicious†versions.
The implementation of the attacks did not require access to the source code.” Yet I believe California approved this system. Paper ballots, I’m begging!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Blah Blah Blah Blah. If you sound smart you must be smart. I beg to differ. Sound like a bunch of little cry babies. Any system any means can possibly be fooled. You watch to much sci fi what if what if what if. Paper ballots are the reason we use electronic ballots. Binary patching thats a common ability among people of America right. Any one can do it, and Paper Ballots no one can manipulate paper. Wow. Stop the nonsense and pull your head out of your behind. Maybe we should sell ATM machines and Stealth Bombers on ebay so any one can reverse engineer them. Geniuses all of you.
Also I want to add, anyone that sells current election materials, should be arreted and jailed. They are criminals undermining the election process that we all count on to voice our voices with choosing the ones who are privillaged to lead this great Nation of American People.
Sounds like you have a lot of energy thats great. But maybe just maybe you should focus that energy into something positive that might actually help people. To say that you can manipulate a computer without the ability to be discovered is extreme fictition. The laws of physics which govern all things, rejects your thoughts.
I do agree that things can be better but that applies to all things in all areas. It’s called innovation and progress.
One could say to attack the legitamacy of American Election Process is Unamerican as if you don’t support our troops you are also Unamerican. Others would call you the terrorist of the election system spreading doubt and discouraging voters “TELLING THEM THAT THEIR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT” SHAME ON YOU!!!
My views are ones that realize that my thoughts and my reality are not the only ones that make reality A REALITY.
If you want attention and people to praise and worship you, start a cult or somthing. OOOH wait you already have. Don’t bother replying as I will not view this page again and will not acknowledge your Michael Moore approach to journalism.
HALF TRUTHS ARE NOT TRUTH!!!!!!
Ah, if only “Truth” had even a scrap of evidence to back up his or her stunning accusations. Then we could all apologize, from jail no doubt, and all elections and every other government process would proceed without a hitch in a fair and balanced manner. Kinda like in Oceania, Eurasia, or Eastasia.
Can scanners be made to provide a more repeatable result? Yes.
Will these more repeatable scanners cost more? Yes.
Does repeatable and accurate mean the same thing? No. Repeatable jsut means we get the same result which coinvinces everybody that it is the correct answer and we can all go home feeling satisfied.
Will these more repeatable count more slowly? The slower you go, the more repeatable the result. Its physics folks. If you want fast then find more money.
Can perfection be achieved? No. Its physics and math.
Is there any system for counting that can achieve perfection? No. Nothing is perfect, whether it is made by a human or actually counted by a human. Again, more money helps.
How close to perfect must we get? Depends on how close the election is, what we will tolerate, how cranky the loser is, and how much money we all have.
Comment: Some day we will need to decide what is good enough and learn to live with the results.
Lora good luck on your endless quest. Hope you like women cause they are gonna like YOU! Rebel and fight corruption you can’t prove a thing when your looking at blaming rap music instead of blaming the ones who commit crimes!!
As for PROOF haven’t seen any yet? Where is this Proof? Come on don’t hold out on us… Rebel with out a cause is a foolish quest. Hope the best for you find a love a passion something productive invest in people invest in progress invest in innovation. That my friend will help all. We live in the same sphere. Love conquers all!! A great man said that “If you can see evil, than evil is inside of you”
JUST WEB-ENABLE THE DAMN ELECTION!
You can trust your mortgage, banking, purchasing, taxes, and everything else to be online, but voting…. ? NO? Afraid of corrupt vote counts? We are there and have been there for quite sometime.
At least with online voting, you should be able to receive a confirmed vote report, with a Primary Key ID from the voting database, giving you confirmation that can tell you how you voted. I think that both parties are worried that more voters will actually use their right to vote and upset the WHOLE system.