Sequoia Voting Machine Flaws
On Sunday morning, I picked up a copy of the New York Times and found the following story on the front page, below the fold:
The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.
The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.
The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.
The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.
I had a bad feeling in my stomach when I read this. My immediate thought was, “Investigation into Sequoia, but not Diebold? Chavez’s leftist credentials? Great. The GOP is going to claim the Democrats stole the election in 2006.”
And then this article shows up at Bradblog: Here We Go Again
Just push the yellow button and you can vote as many times as you want,” Tom Courbat, an Election Integrity advocate from Riverside County, California informed The BRAD BLOG tonight. Not that we’re in any mood to report more such stories, but this seems to be a big one. A very big one.
It seems there’s a little yellow button on the back every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into “Manual Mode” allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.
Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio interview last Tuesday, McPherson — who has been crowing about having the country’s most stringent security process for voting systems — denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems.
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Sequoia’s voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and Riverside, which is known as the “Home of E-Voting” as it was the first county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere.
Thanks to the dilligence of Watt and Courbat, it is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to virtually anybody who wishes to cast as many votes as they please.
“I can do it in 18 seconds,” says Watt. “I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it’s all on the screen prompts. You’re asked ‘Do you want to enter manual mode?’ and you push ‘Yes’…And then you’re on your way.”
“You can then vote as many times as you want. You won’t ever have to stop until someone physically restrains you from voting,” he explained.
“But wouldn’t someone hear the chime?” we asked…
“No, it’s barely audible. Quieter than the beep on your computer when it boots up. The systems are usually kept up against the wall to be near a power outlet and away from the poll workers for privacy. Plus, if you really wanted to pull it off, just come in with a friend and have them talk to the poll workers to distract them. Nobody would ever know.”
Mark my words: the Republicnas will try to have the results of California’s elections invalidated in a desperate effort to cling to power. Let’s not allow them to do that.
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