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Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?

Posted by Zonk on from the lessee-nothin-into-nothin-carry-the-nothin dept.

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.

6 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

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    1. Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem. by bunratty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem. by EvanED · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.)

    3. Re:Minor discrepancy...MAJOR problem. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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  2. Hypocrisy by lamarguy91 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?
  3. Corporate Death Penalty by Dog-Cow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.