Sequoia takes aim at Princeton profs over e-voting analysis plans

Princeton professors Ed Felten and Andrew Appel are certainly no strangers to drawing controversy, and it now looks like they've stirred the pot yet again, this time drawing the ire of Sequoia Voting Systems as a result of their plans to conduct some further e-voting analysis. At the heart of this latest brouhaha is plans that New Jersey election officials reportedly had to send some Sequoia Advantage e-voting machines to the profs for analysis, which Sequoia is unsurprisingly not so keen about. In fact, they've gone so far as to send Felten an email saying that such a plan violates Sequoia's licensing agreement for use of the systems, and that they've "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis." No word on the professors' future plans just yet but, given their past history, we suspect they won't be backing down quite that easily.

[Reader23 @ Mar 19th 2008 1:39PM]

Actually, they've already backed down. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/voting_machine_maker_threatens.html

[Forrest @ Mar 19th 2008 1:51PM]

I think any voting machine manufacturer that is unwilling to allow independent security testing of their system shouldn't even be considered by governments.

This is the fucking 21st century last time I looked at a calendar. You're telling me there's not some way through dedicated connections, paper trails, etc. to give at least SOME level of security to e-voting?

[OSnix*-geek @ Mar 19th 2008 1:57PM]

Sounds to me like they are just scared of someone looking under the hood, to see what makes their clock tick.

It's funny how when it comes to $$$ (online transactions)... the big guys have no problem figuring this out, even a company like diebold, which makes ATM machines (which is scary!), seems to fuck this stuff up.

Not that I feel comfortable about "big brother" tracking who and what we vote for, but sometimes I wonder if the web is truly the answer. The more hardware and "rollout" you have to do the more complicate things become.

[frankXchange @ Mar 19th 2008 2:10PM]

Something stinks about those e-voting systems. There has been plenty of ancillary evidence of problems and strong suggestions of vote tampering that anything less than a complete and total nth level evaluation of the system would be criminally negligent.


These machines are being used in American elections. The usual corporate-government relationship cannot be allowed to exist. If anything, more attention needs to be paid to this than the evaluation of a new jet fighter. The effects of such a system could be more disastrous. The intellectual properties argument is just a smoke screen, and if anything, even more suggestive of potential problems with the system, either intentional or not. No more of theses corporate shell games.

[ecobore @ Mar 19th 2008 2:54PM]

no smoke without fire hien? Sequoia - what have you got to be afraid of? Worried that the voting has already been set-up and counted?
see http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

[BigD145 @ Mar 19th 2008 3:20PM]

Ohio's voting machines are now an official crime scene
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3054

[macona @ Mar 19th 2008 3:34PM]

Oh yeah, theres a non-biased source...

[BigD145 @ Mar 19th 2008 4:50PM]

Same EXACT story from Ohio sources:
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/03/16/BOEPROBE.ART_ART_03-16-08_B1_9F9LIV3.html?sid=101
http://www.whiotv.com/news/15598332/detail.html
whoitv did the original video interviews.

Let's add in the ars technica version for sh!ts and giggles: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-ohio-seizes-voting-machines-in-criminal-investigation.html

[whoster69 @ Mar 19th 2008 3:47PM]

Why do voting machine companies and republicans keep pulling this shit?

[crho85 @ Mar 19th 2008 4:11PM]

on a less serious note. The picture above reminds me of Magic Screen from Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Maybe with one of those collars they give animals after an operation (so they don't lick their stitches)

[DavidB @ Mar 19th 2008 9:58PM]

Perhaps the solution would be to "hire" the researchers onto the Elections Office payroll to do the test.

The issues which Sequoia threaten seem to be related to outside testing (though I'm not sure what "noncompliant analysis" really means). Hiring the researchers onto the payroll keeps the testing in-house.

If I were the elections officials, I'd think about doing it that way ;-)