VOTING COMPANY BULLIES ELECTION OFFICIALS

Failed machines same as those to be used in Pennslvania tally

BRAD BLOG Sequoia Voting Systems’ legal threats against Princeton computer science professors and New Jersey election officials have apparently had their intended effect. The strong-arm email sent to professors Ed Felten and Andrew Appel was apparently accompanied by a two-page letter to Union County, New Jersey, Clerk Joanne Rajoppi, who originally discovered a tally failure in Sequoia’s AVC Advantage touch-screen voting machines after the February 5th Super Tuesday election. The same error was subsequently discovered in at least five other counties.

Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami-Covello tells the New Jersey Times that Sequoia’s decision to block an independent analysis of its touch-screen voting machines makes no sense if the firm is confident that they work properly.

“I think it’s unfortunate that they’re not letting an independent investigation take place,” Sollami-Covello tells the paper this morning. “They should have no problem with having a third party investigate the product if they are confident in their product.”

Another Mercer County, NJ, official sent a letter to the state Attorney General criticizing Sequoia’s bizarre explanation for failures discovered in the systems following state’s recent Primary Election, characterizing what he describes as the company’s “strange, confusing solution.” He said the company’s explanation for the problem, which succeeded in blaming voters and poll workers as usual, was based on a “bizarre scenario, with no cited evidence or testimony” to back it up. . .

Amazingly (or perhaps, not so much at this point), Union County’s attorneys folded to the pressure from the company, which claimed that Election Officials in NJ — who spent millions on the voting systems — are not legally allowed to examine them independently because “the voting machine software is a Sequoia ‘trade secret’ and cannot be handed over to any third-party.”

Fear of a lawsuit from Sequoia, which will also control the state’s elections in an upcoming June primary, as well as the November general election, has led to county attorneys backing down from their plans for the time being, unless the state AG jumps in to take action.

In the threatening email from Smith to the Princeton professors sent last Friday, the company executive threatened legal action if a “non-compliant analysis” of their voting systems was carried out. “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 warned. . .

A Sequoia executive, Edwin Smith, put Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi on notice that an independent analysis would violate the licensing agreement between his firm and the county. In a terse two-page letter, Smith also argued the voting machine software is a Sequoia “trade secret” and cannot be handed over to any third-party.

Rutgers University law professor Penny Venetis stated what should be quite obvious in the Star-Ledger article today. . . “We shouldn’t have a corporation dictating how elections are run in the state,” Venetis said. “If an elected official believes there was an anomaly and the matter has to be investigated, then the official should be able to consult with computer experts without interference.”

Livermore Laboratory’s computer scientist David Jefferson jumped in to comment on our story yesterday, which included the full threatening email sent to the Princeton Professors, in order to note the importance of such a test being carried out on New Jersey‘s Sequoia machines prior to the use of the very same systems next month in Pennsylvania.

“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,” Jefferson wrote. “This bug (and any others discovered) must be fixed.”