Problem Machines Same Model As in Montgomery County

While New Jersey officials were routinely putting to bed the results of their recent Super Tuesday primary, ballot count discrepancies were discovered between those in the internal memory of some machines and the numbers on the memory cartridges of the same machines. The machines involved are the Sequoia AVC Advantage, direct recording electronic voting systems (DREs) of the same model as those used in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

This latest incident compounds the voter distrust and confusion in New Jersey over the Sequoia machines. The story was first reported in the Star-LedgerAssociated Press and then picked up by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org. The mismatch between the paper tapes and cartridge counts surfaced in more than 29 machines in six New Jersey counties: Union, Bergen Gloucester, Middlesex and Ocean (Gloucester County Times). When Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi called the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, the company sloughed it off to being “an anomaly,” according to the Star-Ledger. However, Rajoppi persisted: “Excuse me. It’s not. It’s an error,” she said. Gideon says this about the incident: "Congratulations to Rajoppi for making that important distinction. These are not anomalies, glitches, snags, snafus or hiccups, they are failures by these expensive products and/or voting machine companies to perform as expected."

According to The Star-Ledger, Michelle Shafer, a Sequoia spokeswoman, said her company is working with the clerks to determine the cause of the problem. Meanwhile, AP reports that a Sequoia technician blamed the problem on a corrupted computer chip. Gideon, however, finds that interpretation suspect because it would mean that chips failed in machines in five counties at the same time.

This was not the first New Jersey Super Tuesday-related incident for Sequoia. None other than NJ Governor John Corzine was kept waiting by a stubborn machine for 45 minutes on primary morning before he was able to cast his vote. There were also reports of votes flipping from Clinton to Obama that morning.

The stakes for Sequoia in New Jersey are high. Their 10,000 machines in the Garden State are being contested on constitutional grounds by citizens committed to election integrity in a court suit in State Superior Court. The trial is scheduled for some time in March. Sequoia has failed to meet numerous New Jersey deadlines for introducing a printer for the Sequoia AVC Advantage that was up to state standards. It now appears that despite state law requiring it, there will be no voter-verified paper record for New Jersey voters by the November election.

In addition, the Sequoia machines involved have an unenviable track record of documented security risks. They were hacked by a Princeton professor, who picked up five machines on the internet for $86 each, when one of his graduate students took about seven seconds to pick the lock in the back of the machine. He then unscrewed the motherboard and swapped out “redesigned” computer chips and closed the machine back up. Simple, and the software change can be accomplished by anyone with the equivalent of a bachelors degree in computer science, according to Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel.

Appel explained the process a year ago:

“We can take a version of Sequoia’s software program and modify it to do something different – like appear to count votes, but really move them from one candidate to another. And it can be programmed to do that only on Tuesdays in November, and at any other time. You can’t detect it.”

Independent security tests by experts in California and Ohio also turned up huge security holes that should give elections officials nightmares.  According to the study commissioned by the California Secretary of State:

“We found significant security weaknesses throughout the Sequoia system. The nature of these weaknesses raises serious questions as to whether the Sequoia software can be relied upon to protect the integrity of elections. Every software mechanism for transmitting election results and every software mechanism for updating software lacks reliable measures to detect or prevent tampering,” says one of two official reports on Sequoia, Source Code Review of the Sequoia Voting System.”

The “black box” machines sell for about $8,000 each and the new – still uncertified - printers for about $2,500. Sequoia calls them “tamper-proof.”