Evidence presented in New Jersey e-voting discrepancies

Despite the threat of legal action by one voting machine vendor, Princeton University professor Ed Felten is continuing his independent investigation of perceived irregularities in New Jersey's February 5, 2008 presidential primary election. On Friday, a New Jersey state judge ruled that voting rights activists will also have the right to have their own independent expert examine the state's electronic voting machines.

The question is integrity. What Felten has found so far isn't enough to change the election results, but evidence presented on his blog site suggests there might be enough to undermine our confidence in the electronic system as it stands. Various county clerks in New Jersey who perceive the February counts as being off have supplied Felten with voting machines and paper audits. Sequoia Voting Systems, which produces most of the voting machines in New Jersey, has threatened legal action against Felten and his team if they pursue an independent investigation. Sequoia has said it would appoint its own team of investigators.

The threats haven't stopped Felten.

On March 19, Felten wrote that the "opinion switch," meaning the number of times the ballot was changed to Democrat or Republican, didn't add up to the total votes cast for each party. In this case, there was always one extra vote.

On March 20, Felten posted Sequoia's response. In part, the vendor said that "we have found that when a poll worker selects the lower of the two assigned selection codes, followed by pressing an unused selection code and then pressing the green 'Activate' button, the higher numbered party on the operator panel has its contests activated instead while the selection code button for the original party stays active on the operator panel."

From this, Felten concludes that Sequoia made an engineering error because "no competent engineer would design this system to ever activate the Republican ballot when the poll worker had pressed the DEM button but had not pressed the REP button." Also, "Sequoia's explanation involves a voter seeing the wrong party's ballot being activated, and not complaining about it," he said.

Felten said he found evidence that could support Sequoia's claim; although the vote totals exceeded the voter turnout in one party, they were made up for in the under-reporting in the other party. However, on April 4, 2008 Felten found instatances where the overall votes cast are inconsistent with the explanation provided by Sequioa.

One week later, on April 11, the New Jersey Secretary of State, who must certify all election results, said that the tapes were misread because they were unreadable. So last week, on April 23, 2008, Felten published more examples, clearly showing the same discrepancies.

Paper trail audits have been suggested at both RSA and Shmoocon as valid procedures for certifying the final vote.

Friday's decision to allow an independent expert to examine the systems in addition to Felten's own work could shed more light on the discrepancies.

[Dalkorian]

amazingly stupid

In my precinct, we have optical scan cards. You show up to the
polls, mark your selection on a clear, easy to follow card and slip
it into the machine. The machine tallies up the results, but the
marked ballots are also inside the machine so the results can be
audited. Simple, quick and difficult to rig (not impossible of
course, I don't think there is such a thing as a perfectly secure
anything).

Why do repukes hate something so obvious? Because then they
can't pay off the machine makers to rig the machine to have
some sort of "back door" operation where it rigs the election,
like the one that was discovered here. Paper trails are evil to
them because then you could audit the election and realize it's
been rigged.

This has been PROVEN to anyone still breathing. Repeatedly. The
only question is why people around this country are STUPID
enough to allow the repukes to get away with this crap.

DEMAND an auditable voting process. It's YOUR government
after all, despite all the lies and FUD that fuhrer bushit and his
nazi regime spreads.

[soggy0]

Dalkorian,

Why are you accusing Republicans of voter fraud when it's the Democrats who have the well documented history of voter fraud. The Democratic party is also the reason that Civil Rights laws were necessary in the first place since the terrorist wing of the Democratic party (ie. the KKK) used violence and threats of violence to control voters And lets not be fooled by your attempt to paint fascism onto the Republicans either, the Nazi party should be remembered as the "National Socialist Party". Note that middle word in there and be aware that fascism is a part of the socialist movement of the left and not an activity of the right.

Your party likes to paint it's opposition with it's own brush, have you no shame at all?

[nebadom]

One thing that disturbs me a lot is the fact that people seems not to care democracy at all. Did you know that Sequoia Voting System is owned by the Government of Venezuela? There is a link between the legal owners of Sequoia (including a guy who is currently being prosecuted by the Federal Justice for being involved in money laundry for the Argentina Government), a company named Smartmatic and the Venezuelan Government?

Since the very beginning, the Bush government is allowing this people to get more and more deeply into the voting system, tampering it to benefit the Republican party. In any case, no company, person or group of people should be able to manipulate an election in any way. But his is what Sequoia is being doing since the voting fraud denounced on 2004 in Florida, an election that granted Mr. Bush his second period.

Until the electoral authorities decide to ban Sequoia (and imprisons it's directive) due the LARGE irregularities found all over every single voting process, democracy in the US (and in Venezuela) will be seriously compromised.

I'm sorry for you guys to have to live with the shadow of fraud due our president Chavez and his economic/political threats with the Republican party (and Bush).