[div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"] After Sequoia voting machines registered more votes than there were voters in DC's primaries last September, and the city threatened a lawsuit as a result, the company agreed [a href="vny!://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060503617.html"]to disclose technical details of the system (including source code)[/a] to the city. Although this isn't the first time the company has disclosed the source code of its machines, it is the first time the machines' blueprints will be handed over as well.
Michelle M. Shafer, vice president of communications and external affairs for Sequoia, said the company is "cooperating with the city council to resolve this matter without incurring further legal costs."
"We would like to move past this and resolve this once and for all and do what we can to make sure voters in D.C. feel confident about their voting system," Shafer said.
1) Notice that Michelle Shafer's motivation isn't related to the "fair counting of ballots" or something kooky like that, instead it's based on how much money they can save by not being sued further in court.
2) Notice that she doesn't want to do anything like "prove to the voters that the system counts accurately", instead she uses typical marketing mumbo-jumbo and blathers on about making voters "feel confident" in the system- a completely different thing than proving that it's fair and that it actually works. Who gives a shit if it works as long all the happy little voters "feel confident about their voting system"?
In 2007, Sequoia handed over data to the secretary of state's office in California as part of a review of the systems used there. As a result of that probe, Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified Sequoia, as well as several other election systems, after investigators determined that the machines could be hacked. [/p] Last year, a New Jersey judge ordered Sequoia to turn over limited amounts of information related to elections in that state to a Princeton University computer scientist, Andrew W. Appel. He concluded that a computer expert could hack into Sequoia machines within seven minutes "using simple tools," according to the Newark Star-Ledger. [/p]
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