Blogged quickly by Brad from Palo Alto, CA…
We can’t think of a clever enough turn of phrase this morning to adequately cover the full irony here… Via Computerworld…
A section of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.’s Web site was hacked overnight, and when the company realized what had happened, it took the site down and removed the “intrusive content,” Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer said via e-mail.
Sequoia made “security enhancements” to protect the site from further hacking, and it was back online this afternoon, Shafer said. The company is investigating the origin of the attack.
Not enough irony yet? Add this…
Yes, that would be the same Ed Felten, computer science professor of Princeton, who last week was sent a threatening email from a Sequoia executive, warning of legal trouble should he dare examine the Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen voting machines which failed in New Jersey’s Primary Election in February.
In the wake of this latest PR nightmare for the company, as John Gideon pointed out last night, they’ve decided to mount a Campaign of Lies instead of simply allowing their “tamperproof” e-voting systems to be examined by a third party. Brilliant strategy, guys. As usual.
The same failed Sequoia touch-screen systems, which have never been tested by any independent third-party, are currently set for use in Pennsylvania’s Primary next month. We continue to encourage readers to click here to encourage NJ’s AG to immediately commission a complete technical review of NJ’s voting machines to determine what went wrong.
Wow, am I wondering what the contents of that hack were!
Here’s what I just emailed to the Attorney General’s office (division of elections):
As a voter whose county in California also uses Sequoia Voting Systems, I am appalled to read that Sequoia has threatened a lawsuit if its Advantage model is independently investigated by Princeton experts or others.
Elections must belong to the people, not to the corporations. If you allow Sequoia’s campaign of terror to intimidate you into halting the previously arranged investigation, then the terrorists have won.
Stand up to these intimidation tactics. Stand up for the voters. Stand up for democracy.
Thank you.
No wonder they are so sure that Hillary Clinton will win in Pennsylvania. She cannot lose.
HehhehehAHHWEeeEE! DELICIOUS!! What a bunch of ass-bags. Emily (#1)-me, too. I’d LOVE to know what ED FELTON saw…
Although porn would be delightful, I have a wonderful fantasty that someone hacked in with FACTUAL information about the failures/ breeches of SEQUOIA’s own system just “for one brief shining moment”, to off-set their mountain of lies.
…I do giggle for the first time all month. Thanks, Brad!
Someone must have gotten some screenshots, I would think?!
Someone in gov’t could code a touch-screen and paper ballot backup system, or gov’t could pay someone to do it, either way “the people” would own it and could verify everything, but by using business, business can claim intellectual property and prevent the people from seeing how the software dupes them. The duping isn’t about using imitation crab in your sushi either. It is about who sits in the white house, so you’d think the MSM would go apoplectic, unless they were owned, in which case it falls to the people. They will do it in a less refined and perhaps undignified way that will be broadcast on YouTube like Saddam’s hanging.
Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?
– Tom
B said –
No. They can’t. Because no touch-screen system — “paper trail” or no — can ever offer voters verification that they recorded the votes as the voter intended.
Touch-Screens (DREs) are unsuitable for American democracy. No matter who designs them, and no matter how they “work”. Period.
Short on time, so for now, much more info here for ya: https://bradblog.com/Holt
It was probably a typical 9-year-old just having some fun…
We love irony…here @ the Brad Blog.
BradBlog makes a lot of sense. He doesn’t just single out Wally O’Diebold, he keeps an eye on all those electronic vendor/traitors to society. It’s not moral for them to cry about intellectual property, while it’s been proven that these machines can be rigged. I’m not an expert on this topic like most of the folks here, but it appears that Rove/Bush have stolen elections. They seem to be trying to do that again.
No one with any good sense would vote for McCain over Obama. I think it’s great that the pastors have stepped forward.
McCain’s Pastor, a crazy wingnut
“Rod Parsley: Planned Parenthood = KKK, Nazis”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw8-9AGGsQw
Obama’s Pastor, a man of peace and a talented orator
“FOX Lies!! Barack Obama Pastor Wright”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ
Pastor Wright makes a lot of sense. McCain’s pastor is the real story. Wow. What a nutjob.
McCain can only be elected through election fraud. No one sane is gonna vote for a 100 year war in the Middle East.
I’m in New Jersey and familiar with parts of this issue. It’s important to understand our election certifications aren’t done by the secretary of state, as are most states. The Attorney General is both top law-enforcement officer (head of the state police and the state proseuctor in both civil and criminal court) and also is the state’s top election official.
Interesting mix, huh, Brad?
Plus, our New Jersey legislature enacted law that went into effect January 2008 requiring verified paper ballots in EVERY NJ election.
I’m convinced the AG is conspiring to avoid verifiable polls until after the November elections. The foot-dragging is out of character in her demonstration of her other law enforcement duties. On top of that, she’s openly ignoring a law she’s under oath to enforce.
Taxpayers don’t pay her to make excuses for Sequoia, just to enforce the law our representative government adopted. I see no reason for her not to simply say to the NJ machine manufacturers, “Too bad, so sad, if you don’t have machines we can independently certify by election, you’re done doing business in NJ and we’ll sue you to pay the added costs of a hand-paper election.” See how fast they’d get the mechanical bugs worked out then.
How they do it — overtime, cost overruns, allowing third-party — isn’t her or our problem, or shouldn’t be.
Another thing about the play of events here in NJ that I found odd.
Soon after the November elections, NJ AG Anne Milgram (AG since June) announced she and a couple of other people met with the electronic vote vendors and agreed they needed until May 1 to comply with the law taking effect in January requiring county clerks to have printers on voting machines to produce voter-verified paper votes. That timing conveniently covered 2 of the 3 elections in 2008: the February primaries and the April school board elections.
The machines failed, again, in some places in the primaries, which you would think would solidify resolve to make the companies comply with the law by November.
Instead, a couple of weeks later she announces that now she wants the voting machine companies to have until next January to comply with the law that went into effect this January.
But, this time, she asked for legislation to postpone the law. I didn’t see any reports in December that the law would be amended to extend the deadline to May. If they didn’t do that, I’m thinking our primaries may not even be legally valid.
Even though it was after the primaries when she announced this new delay, legislators raced to expedite that waiver on both floors, and I think it was sent to Gov. Corzine (one of Clinton’s top cheerleaders) two weeks ago to sign. I’ve never noticed our weak legislature moving this fast on anything — ANYTHING.
When I read a long article with quotes from several NJ legislators about the urgency of extending the deadline for voter-verified paper ballots, it just didn’t pass the smell test. The November election was still 9 months away.
1) Why were our legislators working on the taxpayers’ dime to concede defeat FOR voting machine companies that already were on notice since early 2007 that they’d have to attach voter-verified printers to every NJ machine by January 2008?
2) No one ever asked or offered explanation as to what will be done in the 10th month that couldn’t be done by the 9th month with a little overtime on the companies’ books.
3) Compliance with the new law is the responsibility of county clerks, not these particular companies, to provide paper backup votes on any machine they choose to use. Nine months is enough time for clerks to come up with a Plan B if their vendors didn’t come through in time. We’re densely populated but we’re not stupid here, and we’re not short on supplies of paper and labor to hand count ballots if it were done the old-fashioned way. In my observation, the voting itself takes longer on the machines than it used to on paper. It’s merely the convenience of the count that we’re talking about here.
But no legislator interviewed in the newspaper articles I read were asked or answered any of these questions. Republicans and Democrats and our ever-enabling “newspapers” alike here moved this thing through without questioning alternatives and without regard to voters’ opinions.
I see no logic in the urgency to pass this postponement of enforcing the law. It’s just not workin’ for me, man.
P.S., Brad, I wish you’d reconsider your criticism of the Holt bill. I think it’s fair and considers the realities of how local elections offices operate. I don’t like DREs either, but they’re here to stay until someone builds a better mouse trap. Holt’s bill has the money to encourage someone to engineer and sell that better mouse trap.
Jeff, the better mousetrap is voter-marked paper ballots that can be preserved for manual recounts should the circumstances so merit. We already have the wheel, you needn’t try to pretend to reinvent it. We imposed this system on Japan and Germany after WWII to ensure that corrupting their elections would be impossible. Please go invent something that doesn’t have to do with outsourcing our democracy!
#13 czaragorn- Amen.
Have paper ballots with clear directions. People then use the marker to select their candidates and referendum choices.
When I read someone say essentially that we need to get over it, that electronic voting machines are here to stay, I wonder if the person works for one of the vendors or for a place like Netvocates.
This is the same Sequoia that used ballot paper that was rejected twice by their own employees in the 2000 election in “Hanging Chadsville,” Florida, that initiated the whole push to electronic voting. F*cking scumbags don’t want to end up like Diebold. Too bad. It’s their own fault.
That makes him a person of interest … 😉 … oh the ironies … you are ‘doin a heckuva job’ Sequential … what election problems?
Jeff #12 said:
I didn’t get the time, in my above quick comment, to offer FULL DISCLOSURE that I worked on the Holt Bill originally, prior to it’s introduction.
Even with that, I could not support it the way it’s written. And then it became far worse during the committee process.
The bill does NOT take into account “how local elections offices operate” unless you believe that local elections offices should operate in secret, with secret software, that no citizen is allowed to examine and on which no citizen can ever actually verify that their vote — or anybody elses — was recorded accurately.
That sort of legislation (HAVA) is how we got into this mess in the first place. You think we should do it AGAIN? I don’t think so.
Nonsense. Tell it to the state of Florida (Republican Gov., Republican legislature) where they just got rid of DREs across the entire state.
If you believe they are “here to stay” then you are either a hopelessly delusional/denialist election official or voting system rep. Or you’ve been deceived into believing their nonsense.
It’s your democracy. If you’re willing to hand it over to irresponsible private corporations, as the Holt bill would institutionalize in federal law, that’s up to you. I will not be fooled again.
It’s time we stop falling for “traps” at all when it comes to the heartbeat of democracy.
I hope you’ll reconsider your position, and stand up for the transparency that American democracy requires. Short of that, you don’t have one.