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

Count from Zero

[jibster]

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

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

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.

Re:Count from Zero

[91degrees]

I suspect it's actually a data error. Dems have one too many, GOP have one too few. This is exactly the number of votes cast for Guiliani. They could have simply set him to the wrong party.

Re:Count from Zero

[Shakrai]

I live in NY (still using the old level machines, which I love :) ), and consistently the people running the poles forget to switch the switch on the side of the machine to "enable" republican or democrat (depending on whose in the both last, and whose in it next). Heck, the people running the polls are usually retired, elderly, and volunteer.

What county do you live in? Here in Broome County they give us colored cards (green for the Democrats, pink for the Republicans) that we had out to the voters after signing them in. The voter then gives that card to the person operating the machine who sets the primary lever accordingly before hitting the entrance button that allows them to vote.

I've been running a polling place since 2004 and I've never had that mistake happen in a Primary Election. If you've seen it happen more then once or twice you should probably inform your local Board of Elections so they can address the problem. It just isn't supposed to happen that way......

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?

Re:Hypocrisy

[monxrtr]

The State of New Jersey signed licensing terms that does not allow an independent party to review the code. The state should not violate that contract. And thus, the State of New Jersey violated its own laws (and so did Sequoia), and possibly Federal Statutes as well, regarding independent poll observers and independent verification of vote tallies. By definition of it being closed source proprietary code, it's illegal. Goodbye Sequoia contract, at a minimum. Rinse and repeat for every State and County. This is going to be a huge victory for open source, and a huge blow against "imaginary property". Just an appetizer before the RIAA goes down.

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?

Maybe the votes were not placed?

[Ngarrang]

At first, I was thinking,"Oh, maybe some people chose not to vote after calling up either Rep or Dem." But then I realized the math involved. The computer says 60 votes were cast for the Reps, but 61 votes are actually placed.

Sheesh, why does this have to be so difficult. We can conduct trillions of dollars of business electronically, but we still don't have an effective digital voting system? I think the conspiracy here is by someone who hates technology likes to kill trees for paper balloting, not that digital voting is being rigged.

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.

Re:Not only that...

[Jaysyn]

Mod down, way NSFW.

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!

[TripMaster Monkey]

We know that paper ballots work, and are a LOT harder to fudge to the level of throwing an election.

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.

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.

A Common Problem.

[oahazmatt]

Considering that this article was listed as showing "11 of 3 Comments" I think this is quite a common problem.

Slashdot Polls

[ke5aux]

Ok, thats it! We need the source code for /. polls.

Re:Slashdot Polls

[ke5aux]

Well, looks like they have nothing to hide so it's not worth it.

Re:oh dear.

[CaptainZapp]

Pffffft, that was the sound of sequoia credibility dying a death

What credibility are you talking about?

After all those neato stints that just about every voting machine company tried to pull their credibility is somewhere between a San Francisco Tenderloin crack hooker and a timeshare salesman for quite some time now.

Thinking about it the hookers credibility is probably a lot better then the ones of those voting machine vendors.

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.

Re:Minor correction:

[Naughty Bob]

And an Update: Sequoia's intimidation has worked , the state won't be sending Felten a machine.

Re:it's like the Kempelen's chess machine

[why-is-it]

The little gnome in the machine made a slight error. So what?

Maybe they should try running KDE instead?

Re:Huh?

[tmalone]

in the primary you have to pick a side if you want to vote. Democrat or Republican. Once you choose, you must vote within that party. At least in a closed primary that is how it works. So, if you're a registered Green, you don't get to vote in the primary. In the general election of course, everybody gets to vote.