Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?

whoever57 writes "Ed Felten is showing a scan of the summary from a Sequoia voting machine used in New Jersey. According to the paper record, the vote tallies don't add up — the total number of Republican ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Republican primary and the total number of Democratic ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary. Felten has a number of discussions about the problems facing evoting, up to and including a semi-threatening email from Sequoia itself." Update: 03/20 23:30 GMT by J : Later today, Felten added an update in which he analyzes Sequoia's explanation. He has questions, comments, and a demand.

Comments

Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem.

[TripMaster Monkey]

As Felten made clear in the article, it's not the size of the discrepancy that's the issue, but the fact that it's there at all. You'd expect this sort of minor error from humans, but the machine turning out this discrepancy is a dead giveaway that something is fundamentally wrong with its inner workings. If we could examine said inner workings, we could determine the cause of this bizzare behavior, but actually knowing what is going on inside their machines is something Sequoia is bound and determined to prevent. One can't help but wonder why, given what we've just seen...

Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem.

[bunratty]

Even if the tally was exactly right, in general you cannot prove a program correct by using only black box testing. There are simply too many possible inputs to have time to test for all but the most trivial inputs. For all we know, there's a backdoor or unintentional security vulnerability that can be used to alter election outcomes. We need to be able to examine the machine's inner workings to have any hope of verifying those are not problems with the voting machine.

Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem.

[EvanED]

Perhaps the error was on Mr. Felton's side... what method did he use to count the votes?

He used the "look at the vote totals the machine printed" method.

Seriously, it has a picture of them. Did you RTFA and somehow didn't notice it, or do you like making uninformed comments? (Okay, that is a bit inflammatory. The first time I went to TFA, the pictures didn't load. But it still says in the text.)

Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem.

[StrawberryFrog]

I agree. Humans can be sound, but still off by one. calaculators are either correct or broken.

However, the size of the discrepancy is 1/60 or so. That's 1.6%, which is enough to change the outcome of some recent US elections. So is it of a significant size? Yes, it is.

Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem.

[TripMaster Monkey]

RTFA. The discrepancy isn't between Felten and the voting machine...it's between the voting machine and itself. The machine generated results that were self-contradictory.

Lawyers

[Jaysyn]

Well, bring on the lawsuit from Sequoia I guess. Hopefully the ACLU & EFF will help Dr. Felten with his legal fees.

Hypocrisy

[lamarguy91]

FTA:

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.

I love the double-standard here. The government wants to invade the privacy of it's citizens (discussed several times over on these very forums) and one of the typical responses is "Well, if you don't have anything to hide...".
But when an independant third party wants to verify that an important piece of hardware used in our political process can actually do the very simple math that it's required to do, the corporation who produces is has laws that it can throw in one's face to prevent verification of data. Shouldn't someone be pressing Sequoia with the "if you don't have anything to hide..." mantra?

Does anyone else here see the obvious double-standard that we've created for ourselves?

Software bug

[INeededALogin]

The readout on a screen seems like a simple data display problem. Perhaps the programmer did something stupid like:

print array.lastIndex.indexNum

instead of

print array.count

The real concern here is not that it has a bug. All software has bugs. The concern is over what kind of QA was performed to guarantee our votes. If such a simple and obvious test case was not performed, how on earth are we to feel good about this machine?

Re:Count from Zero

[TripMaster Monkey]

Both tallies are out by 1 count. Could it be the one is counting from zero and the other from one?


Actually, the Republican tally was heavy one vote, while the Democratic tally was light one vote. Thus, your proposed explanation doesn't wash.

On the bright side at least the error will vanish as the number of votes approaches infinity :)

That's assuming that the error is due to the cause you postulated, which cannot be the case.

Enough Already!

[flajann]

Nix all the evoting crap and go back to paper ballots. We know that paper ballots work, and are a LOT harder to fudge to the level of throwing an election.

On the whole of it, I have a big problem with the "Winner takes all" system anyway, with the majority giving the power to a handful to beat up on us all. Not even getting into how the Republicans and the Democrats systemically shuts out all other parties.

But if we are going to have voting, at least make it fair. Give equal time to ALL parties, not just the D-R club, and use paper ballots under tight security. At least make "Democracy" less of a joke than it already is.

Re:Enough Already!

[Yvanhoe]

While I agree with you, I just have to point out that it's not all that hard...after all, the recent presidential election in Mexico was stolen the old-fashioned way. And we know this. In US, no one can know for sure.

Re:Maybe the votes were not placed?

[encoderer]

One counter started at Zero, the other at One? ...These kind of bugs are written all the time. ...Of course, this is why the software should be OSS. The more eyeballs, the more people running in debug mode just to play around and have fun, the more people slicing and dicing the source code, the better.

It's hard to believe this is even an issue. The problem is that the people making voting machines (like Diebold) come from Banking sectors, where privacy and private, proprietary systems are the modus operandi.

Seems to me a good way to fix this would be to get some high-profile Non-Profs and top-brand CS schools (I'm thinking MIT, Apache Foundation, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, etc) all working together to gather some grant money, build the hardware and software solutions, open everything up for scrutiny, and produce a working product.

We can wave our arms over what somebody SHOULD build, but if we had a compelling alternative ready to go, it'd be a lot easier to pressure governments to do the right thing.

Corporate Death Penalty

[Dog-Cow]

How is intentionally preventing auditing of the basic method of democracy anything less than treason? The Board of Directors should be jailed forever for condoning this activity by the Company's lawers.