READER COMMENTS ON

"SEQUOIA TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINES HACKED, FOUND VULNERABLE TO VOTE-FLIPPING BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY!"

(19 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... phil said on 2/10/2007 @ 11:41 pm PT...





Okay, I can't take it much more.

This is a joke, but it's more reality than ya think. Sequoia [Version 1134a2.0.08]

(C) Copyright 1985-2007 Sequioa Corp.

c:\find "screwdriver.dll" found in c:\sequoia\security\panel\lock\ Government Auctions..heh..

I bet you can still get printers for printing money.

Just Ask Lesco

http://www.mlesko.com/im...matthew-lesko-circle.jpg Comeon man wtf. This whole damn thing is a joke. It's just bull to control the USA. Mostly I refer to Electronic Voting Machines as DIEBOLD (Sort of like some folks say "google" as a verb; google don't like that), but don't think Sequoia and ESS and all the other fucks ain't in my radar too. None of their shit works. I CHALLENGE ANY OF THEM! OP-SCAN is aparently the less of the evils now. But with electronics one evil equals control, total control. These people that are in charge of our government are fuck-up's. They do not want to fix our problems. They do not want to hold anyone responsible. Where the hell is debra Bowen? I Just loaded up ss.ca.gov looks the same crap to me. FUCK THESE MACHINES AND FUCK THESE MACHINE MANUFACTURES~!

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Floridiot said on 2/11/2007 @ 3:36 am PT...





When are we going to get down to the nuts and bolts of things and really see what the DOD's (and others) role in all of this is ?

For all of our money (that we used to have), I'll bet odds they'll do anything to keep the money flowing towards their future (past, current) employers in the private sector, and any University that tries to study this has threats to their funding thrown at them That's the whole scam IMO. Watch McKinney try to get them to fess up about the missing trillions and who's involved, all she gets is the runaround and then booted from Congress. (remember ? they used the 'Republicans switched to Dems for the primary' meme)

Link Keep on keepin on John, we need the evidence

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 2/11/2007 @ 5:14 am PT...





Good for Princeton! Now if the wimpy MSM would do its job so we can put these criminals where they belong.

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Floridiot said on 2/11/2007 @ 6:48 am PT...





Good for the Northern States...it'll be hard to convince the Southern States when half of the people work for the DOD in both the public and private sector (thats why they vote red IMO...and theres this too, Link)

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... Paul Lehto said on 2/11/2007 @ 1:31 pm PT...





These Advantage machines are used in many counties in New Jersey, where Cong. Rush Holt represents. LIke Lowell Finley pointed out in his senate testimony linked at votetrustusa.org, no paper trail or audit system would detect or would have solved the problem of the 18,000 undervotes..... It would almost for sure match up and give the election a clean bill of health.... See the bad news for paper trails at http://www.votetrustusa....mp;id=2252&Itemid=26 with detailed discussion of Sarasota situation as well. All such paper trail/audit solutions are a variation on a deal with the devil; devil SAYS: YOU give ME 100% secret electronic first counting, and I'll give you a 3% audit a week later that overrides my secret counts, which i can later have held unconstitutional for being just like Al Gore's lame ass partial recount request in Florida was unconstitutional for not treating all the voters the same under Equal Protection. Devil Continues: I like my secret vote counting, and when it really counts I'll get it tossed in court anyway. It's perfect! The only response seems to be that such compromises are the only ones that are "achievable". If congress TRULY INSISTS on counting their own re-eleections in secret then let's have a roll call vote on that PLEASE. PLEASE!! I'd give just about anything for a roll call vote on the approval of secret vote counting in congressional elections. It would be for the history books. Maybe even one channel of c-span would show. We can only dream of the defense of democracy that might occur.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... Sam said on 2/11/2007 @ 8:13 pm PT...





Sorry to be a Johnny-One-Note - but shifting in due course to machine-free hand counted paper ballot systems is the only real solution

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... Ancient said on 2/11/2007 @ 9:02 pm PT...





Yeah and a LOT CHEAPER TOO!

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... Txacoli said on 2/11/2007 @ 9:11 pm PT...





I own a bar in the mountains of California,and we are the polling place for our area. Because of logistical considerations (lots of precincts, one delivery contractor, huge geographic area..... we get our Sequoia machines on Friday before the elections, and they are collected on Wednesday or Thursday after. It was all I could do to keep my UC Santa Cruz student bartenders and cooks from hacking Frank Zappa into Governor of our fair state. As a compromise, we dressed up our machines and took them around to the local bars to meet the voters in advance of the elections. It is an obvious engineering problem: there are too many precincts for voting machines to be delivered in a timely manner....anywhere in the U.S. They are always going to be vulnerable. And with sweetheart, no-bid contracts the security is bound to be sloppy. The hackers will always win. Paper is the only secure answer.

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Monsieur le Prof said on 2/12/2007 @ 5:09 am PT...





This definitely brings into question the integrity of the past elections since 2002. Thank you Brad Blog for helping to get this information out there. People need to continue to work at the local level to ensure that future elections are properly counted, and that past fraud and wrongdoing is prosecuted. OT - For a humorous take on recent events, check out this article: Bush: 'Every fallen soldier's family will get a new SUV'

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... BOB YOUNG said on 2/12/2007 @ 5:11 am PT...





Sorry SAM but the solution is not nearly that simple. The machines were clearly set up to facilitate fraud. Taking the machines away will reduce fraud by making it harder to get away with fraud, but that is not the complete solution. Fraud was a problem before the machines came along and will continue to be a problem in the future unless we go on from there to publicly verifiable vote counting of some type. The machines are not the real problem. The real problem is many of the people involved in our elections hate democracy and will do almost anything to get the election results they desire. Democracy will remain a sham as long as we let them have their way. Hand counted paper ballots is not the only answer or even a correct answer to creating a true democracy right here in the USA! One note will never be enough to take us to democracy from here Johnny.

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... Floridiot said on 2/12/2007 @ 8:56 am PT...





About my above rant, I have to clarify

It's not all about the DOD/Government or the private sector, it's in the shadowy area between the two (aka lobbies, think tanks, and like entities) that has to be investigated and outed

That's where the malfunction is for pretty much all of our problems today IMO

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. said on 2/12/2007 @ 8:57 am PT...





March 16, 2006 Robin M. St. Andrews

Deborah J. Pahler

St. Lawrence County Board of Elections

48 Court Street

Canton, NY 13617 I have some cogent observations on the displays of voting machines that took place at the Community Room of the Fire Station on February 27, 2006. The Sequoia touch screen machine actually froze up, in full view of me, Klaus Proemm, and others. “Not a good sign,” someone said. The vendor explained that the machine operates on Windows XP. Good Lord! Every single day that I operate my computer, a window appears on my screen, once or twice, saying “Windows has encountered a problem and needs to close.” The Sequoia vendor had to shut down the machine, unlock the back, and reboot, in order to get it to work properly again. I advised him that St. Lawrence County is the largest in the state, and I asked him if Sequoia technicians would be at all the polling stations – a rhetorical question, of course. I asked him: “What if this happens on Election Day?” “It won’t, it can’t,” he said. “But it just happened right now, in front of us all.” “It won’t happen on Election Day.” “But touch screen voting machines froze in Youngstown, Ohio on Election Day, 2004.” http://www.vindy.com/bas...news/281829446390855.php “That wasn’t Sequoia. We don’t do business in Ohio.” Maybe not any more, but Sequoia was the vendor in Lake County, Ohio, so his statement was misleading, though perhaps unintentionally. http://verifiedvoting.or...ate=ohio&county=Lake By contrast, the vendors for the Liberty touch screen voting machine were better informed and more knowledgeable. A man from the Netherlands spent much time with me. He showed me how to test the screen to make sure that they are not programmed to default to any candidate, as happened in Youngstown, Ohio. He showed me that the machine was secure against physical tampering, and showed me the seal that would have to be broken. He explained that, unlike Ohio, the company’s source code, though considered proprietary information, would be given to the State of New York to be held in escrow. And he said he had no problem with having the actual programming done at the county level. In short, I do not trust the Sequoia machines. In New Mexico, Sequoia Advantage machines produced an unacceptable 5.28% undervote rate in the 2004 presidential election, and 32 precincts reported undervote rates above 10%. (Ellen Theisen and Warren Stewart, Summary Report on New Mexico State Election Data). http://www.democracyforn...State%20Election%20Data' In our case, the machines of both companies are required to provide a voter-verified paper trail, which is, on its face, an improvement over the time-tested lever machines. But the Sequoia vendor could not verify that the vote tally produced by the machine, upon which the reported results would be based, will actually match the voter-verified paper trail. There is no way for us to tell if the machine has been programmed otherwise, without counting the ballots by hand. Because the machine runs on software, and utilizes Windows XP, a program known to many, the source code could be altered. By contrast, the Liberty machines run on “solid ware,” which means that once the source code is established, it cannot be changed by anyone. The State of New York would test a number of machines, verify that they all are working properly, and then the same source code, on file with the State, would be burned onto each and every machine. I do not trust electronic voting. I have seen too many things go wrong. Do not even think of awarding the contract to Sequoia. Sincerely, Richard Hayes Phillips

Canton, New York richardhayesphillips@yahoo.com NOTE TO READERS: Almost the entire State of New York has thus far rejected electronic voting machines.

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. said on 2/12/2007 @ 9:13 am PT...





NOTE TO READERS: Unfortunately omitted from my letter to the St. Lawrence County Board of Elections was the following exchange: Conceding that, in the event of voting machine failure, it might take an hour or more for Sequoia technicians to arrive at polling stations in the more remote parts of the county, the Sequoia vendor assured me that paper ballots would be on hand at all the polls, just in case. Naturally, I asked him: "Then why don't you just dispense with the machines and go with paper ballots in the first place?" Richard Hayes Phillips

Canton, New York

richardhayesphillips@yahoo.com

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... Sidney Keith said on 2/12/2007 @ 9:30 am PT...





Bless Brad and BradBlog forever an' ever, AMEN!---AMEN!---AMEN! KEEP IT UP, YOU ARE DOIN' GREAT!

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... howdy said on 2/12/2007 @ 9:52 am PT...





I hope this has finally pushed NY over to pen and paper for abled voting and that that the DREs are properly disposed of. You should all recall that NY is being sued by the US DOJ with failure to comply with HAVA. http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/ny_hava.htm they have until September 2007 in the latest deal with the Feds http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Mozart said on 2/12/2007 @ 11:04 am PT...





OMG, people! The corporate county that "governs" where I live--Nevada County, California--is considering the purchase of those damn DREs! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I am asking all of you to PLEASE send the listed folks e-mails so that they can be appraised as to the insanity of getting DREs for this county. I will be out of town during the public-input meeting (Tues, the 13th of Feb...the local paper did not give much notice for the meeting, per usual) and cannot attend the meeting, hence my SOS call out to you guys/gals. Here's the elections page of the county website: http://www.mynevadacounty.com/elections/ Click on "contact us" and please send them e-mails letting them know that it's INSANE to even consider getting the DREs, much less get them. Their reasoning is that the damn things are "free", thanks to HAVA. Sheeesh! Here's the url to the article in the local paper: http://www.theunion.com/...;SearchID=73271939111363 And here's the e-mail addy of the Staff Writer, Jill Bauerle, who wrote the elections article: jillb@theunion.com Please, please have at them, guys/gals. I'll do what I can via e-mails, but I cannot attend the meeting; however, I will ask some local people to attend the meeting. And in the local article, there was a mention of elections websites, like blackboxvoting, verifiedvoting...but NO BRADBLOG? WTF? That Jill lady needs to know about BRAD BLOG, so if a bunch of you take action, she WILL know about Brad Blog before long! I'm sure that you'd agree that we ALL are affected by any damn DREs in any county in America, since it is in the counties where the stolen elections, e.g. 2004, happen, so we gotta stop them where ever we can. Thank you for your time and consideration. ~Seth

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... howdy said on 2/12/2007 @ 12:32 pm PT...





The good news for Nevada County, CA is that the elections department will choose a system (or blending of systems paper and plastic) and then present that to their Board of Supervisors who will vote to request the Voting Modernization Board accept the plan. That should take some time, even in Nevada County. Everyone is hoping the new Secretary of State will decertify systems (or say that she will not) prior to the next Modernization Board. California needs a clear directive from Bowen and soon.

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... Mozart said on 2/12/2007 @ 1:24 pm PT...





Hey Howdy, Thank you for the information. Here's to hop'n that Bowen can slam the door shut on the damned DREs through the decertification process. If that does not work, then baseball bats are next. Btw, I wonder what kind of sentencing the person who actually took a hammer to an election (Ohio?) polling place and proceeded to beat the shiat out of on DRE? I've thought of doing that many times, but I knew that the system would nail my arse in a jail cell for some time if I did that. ~Seth

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... Grizzly Bear Dancer said on 2/12/2007 @ 4:13 pm PT...

