Meanwhile…in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, where plans to use Diebold’s hackable Electronic Voting Equipment have recently been nixed, Plan B seems to be failing too. The machines they’d hope to use instead, as made by Sequoia Voting Systems, have now been shown to be hackable as well.
Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette picked up on the story yesterday, and followed up today on the testing being run in Allegheny County by Dr. Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, on the “new” Sequoia Voting Machines. The county had hoped to use these systems — ten-year old Sequoia “Advantage” machines as purchased from Clark County, Nevada who is moving to a different Sequoia system — in their upcoming Primary Elections in May. That plan, now may be in grave doubt.
The testing of the machines has found so many problems — including Shamos’ findings during “tampering tests” that he was able to instantly “transform a handful of votes into thousands” — that he has now simply shut down the entire process described as “pointless” due to all of the errors in the software.
“It’s not useful to continue because [the software] clearly is not stable,” said Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University professor.
Sequoia Voting Systems, the Oakland, Calif.-based manufacturer of AVC Advantage voting machines, will have a chance to fix the software and have it retested in a week or two. Otherwise, it’s unlikely the machines will be certified for use in Pennsylvania.
As you may recall, it was machines made by Sequoia which failed so miserably across the state in Illinois just last week during the Primary Elections there. Just a handful of the many mainstream reports covering the meltdown are here, here and here.
Now pay attention…because this can be confusing…
Illinois’ Cook County (Chicago) had used new Sequoia “Edge” machines in the recent primary that had been purchased by Clark County, Nevada. Since Illinois’ primaries were first, and Sequoia didn’t have time or inventory to fill both orders, Cook used Clark’s machines for last week’s contest only.
Those “Edge” machines, which failed so disastrously in Cook County, IL, are now to be shipped to Clark County, NV who is selling their own ten-year old Sequoia “Advantage” machines to Allegheny County, PA. It is those ten-year old machines which are now being tested in Allegheny and failing so horrendously.
All of which begs the questions: How well were those “Advantage” machines tested in Nevada in the last ten years? How much is Nevada now looking forward to using the new and failed “Edge” machines that they had loaned for a single use to Cook County, IL? And finally, will Clark County, NV bother to test them to find out if they too are hackable like the ones — modified a bit by Sequoia on the way, apparently — that they’ve just unloaded on Allegheny County, PA?
But back to the halted tests in Allegheny…and the claims by Sequoia officials that the problems found were “no big deal”. Shamos doesn’t see them as “no big deal” and is concerned that a malicious hacker could do precisely what he was able to do in these tests…
Developers quickly fixed the problem by replacing a file in the tabulation software, but that didn’t alleviate Dr. Shamos’ concerns. A malicious hacker could easily make the same switch, allowing votes to be changed, he said.
“What control is there over the software package if different files can be swapped in and out?” he asked.
As mentioned, Sequoia officials were predictably quick to dive into spin-control/crisis-management mode claiming they can simply continue to fix the software problems right on up “until just before the election.” Said Larry Tonelli, Sequoia’s state manager for Pennsylvania and New York:
Not sure how such software changes could be testified and certified if they are made “just before the election” — so we fail to see how this is “no big deal.”
Neither do we understand, with the hardware “out there for eight or nine years” how Sequoia failed to find and fix these problems on their own previously. With that in mind, why should they be trusted to get it right just days before an election???
But that didn’t stop another Sequoia spokes from blaming everyone else for problems with their own shitty machines, dredging up last week’s (literally) excuse from Illinois and, apparently, trying to apply it here:
It’s unclear whether Shafer was referring to the problems in Illinois where Sequoia has been blaming poll workers for the fact their machines failed, or whether she’s suggesting that the problems Shamos has found has something to do…somehow or another…with “the people who use it.” Those “people”, in this case, being Shamos who knows how to both use and test — and now, apparently hack — Sequoias Electronic Voting Systems.
Additional reporting on this article by John Gideon
So far, there is evidence that the elections have been rigged going back 10 years in some places, Clark county Nevada being one of them
When is enough going to be enough ?
I plan to make these Sequoia machines failures a part of my campaign for Governor of Nevada. The New Right Conservative ‘so-called’ front runner [Congressman Jim "there’s no war in Iraq" Gibbons] has a record in Congress so deplorable no well informed ‘sane’ citizen would possibly consider voting for him to be the next Governor of Nevada. We have early voting here in Nevada btw. Rigged Sequoia machines would be his only hope of victory. Leola McConnell, Liberal Democrat for Governor of Nevada, 2006
Leola, are you running under the Democratic party banner?
Killer story, Brad.
If they’re hacking through the tabulator, as it sounds like they are, that was first exposed by Jeremiah Akin of Riverside California, back in early 2004.
The Sequoia WinEDS tabulator actually allows changes in the source code through a MENU item. What’s really handy is that your changes evaporate when you close the program, leaving no trace.
You say this is the Sequoia Advantage, vs. the Sequoia Edge. Those are the precinct machines. The WinEDS system is used with the Edge, I’m not sure if it is also used with the Advantage.
At any rate, the fact that Sequoia is unstable is undeniable. Good to see Shamos himself finding flaws. Does this mean he gets to collect his own $10,000 bet that he promised anyone who could hack a DRE?
Brad,
Great story and very clearly written. You explained the dance of the machines between Nevada and Illinois and Pennsylvania really well.
It is shocking to think that those machines were used for so many years in NV and were declared to be working fine. It’s equally shocking to think that the ITA has approved this rubbish–both the old machines and the new machines.
I’d love to know more from Floridiot about when these questionable results started, if she knows.
This is a huge story and I hope there will be numerous BB follow-ups when you can clone yourself multiple times to create more hours in the day.
Why don’t we have more whistleblowers from inside the voting machine companies? What has happened to Hart Whistleblower Singer? Surely an NDA can not be used to prevent disclosure of a crime.
BVAC #2
She said in her post "Liberal Democrat for Governor of Nevada, 2006".
Typo … should be BVAC #3 …
Dredd, #6
That doesn’t mean she has the party endorsement, or a primary opponent or anything. I’m also unaware if Nevada uses the national party or if its made up of regional parties. Hence my question.
Senate Hearing on Censure of Bush
WHEN
Friday, Mar. 31, 2006
9:30 a.m. (Eastern Time I think)
Committee
Judiciary
Agenda
To hold hearings
to examine the call to censure
the President.
SH-216
nice catch, brad. i’ll probably put that up.
OFF TOPIC ALERT!!
(Sorry y’all)
Chevy’s holding a "commercial apprentice" contest. I don’t think this is quite what they had in mind.
Quick! Go look at it before they take it down.
LINK
Remember, Pennsylvania was the site of a major fraud in 2004, as revealed by a 6% discrepancy between exit polls and tabulated votes in the presidential race. The only reason it didn’t attract more attention is that Kerry won the state anyway; the fraudsters miscalculated the number of votes they had to flip for Bush to win Pennsylvania.
Looks as if they’re already planning a grand scheme to save Santorum’s seat. I can picture it now; Casey leads in the polls by 58-42% one day before the election, but Santorum wins 51-49%. The media credit "family values" with his victory. Matt Bai writes an article for the New York Times magazine crediting a Republican get-out-the-vote campaign.
I was AT the failed Sequoia exam on Tuesday and Wednesday; the only person from Western PA (other than Shamos) who was there.
It was actually worse than Post-Gazette article makes it seem — really a disaster.
Shamos said (on the video record, during the exam) that he was in the interesting position of having a hack to suggest to Harri Hursti, instead of the other way around.
Allegheny County is is a tizzy, as well they should be.
MB in PA
PS: Brad, I just sent you my report on the exam via e-mail.
I’ve been saying for YEARS that Bill Gates has totally screwed "the world" with his practices, and now you’re seeing the full on brunt of what I’ve been talking about. "we have until the morning of the election to get this rigth".. and that’s the typical attitude of CORPORATIONS who make software these days.. "we can ship what we have, so long as we get the bulk of the patches in place before it hits shelves in 2 wks"..
For our DEMOCRACY, this is NOT ACCEPTABLE. They obviously can’t test their own code.. so how do we "fix things" on election day? As Brad pointed out, how do we retest (fully) to ensure nothing else is broke? we have to take the word of the manufacturer.. Seems kind of silly to me, especially since we never get to see the code that’s put on those machines.
If we ever want to "trust" machines, the code has to be open to the public, on file, and LOCKED well before the elections.. period. That isn’t ever gonna happen, and is STILL not a guarantee of no hanky-panky.
Brad.. a reason they might have "new code" on the "old working hardware" could simply be that they are adding features.. making text bigger, changing the way the screens switch, changing colors, adding features to allow easier manual programming of candidates, etc. etc. I can understand how "major revisions" could happen to the underlying software.. think of it like upgrading a Windows 95 machine to Windows XP.. the hardware is the "same" and works fine, it’s the crap code on top of that hardware that is screwy 😉
Marybeth – very interesting. It is good that you were there. Look forward to hearing more.
It’s interesting that the media felt they had to play down the whole thing.
Marybeth – Received your report. Will be reviewing shortly (as soon as a free minute arrives 🙂
Bev wondered:
You say this is the Sequoia Advantage, vs. the Sequoia Edge. Those are the precinct machines. The WinEDS system is used with the Edge, I’m not sure if it is also used with the Advantage.
It is. According to Shamos (paraphrasing his info here, hopefully Gideon can clarify if necessary) the Advantage machines were sent back to Sequoia on the way from NV to PA so that features could be added for disabled voters. Audio and such to try and meet HAVA requirements.
Shamos seems to indicate that the firmware with the Advantage is okay, but the WinEDS additions/updates are the main disaster.
Hope that clarifies a touch. Was a bit too technical to include in the original story (which was getting long already). But there it is.