Kaizenlog

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| Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors                    |
|   from the got-some-splainin’-to-do dept.                          |
|   posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 29, @13:56 (Security)         |
|   http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/29/1712215 |
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goombah99 writes “Princeton Professor, Ed Felton, has posted a [0]series
of [1]blog [2]entries in which he shows the printed tapes he obtained
from the NJ voting machines don’t report the ballots correctly. In
response to the first one, Sequoia admitted that the machines had a known
software design error that did not correctly record which kind of ballots
were cast (republican or democratic primary ballots) but insisted the
vote totals were correct. Then, further tapes showed this explanation to
be insufficient. In response, State officials insisted that the (poorly
printed) tapes were misread by Felton. Again further tapes showed this
not to be a sufficient explanation. However all those did not foreclose
the optimistic assessment that the errors were benign — that is, the
possibility that vote totals might really be correct even though the
ballot totals were wrong and the origin of the errors had not been
explained. Now he has found (well-printed) tapes that show what appears
to be [3]hard proof that it’s the vote totals that are wrong, since two
different readout methods don’t agree. Sequoia has made trade-secret
[4]legal threats against those wishing to mount an independent
examination of the equipment. One small hat-tip to Sequoia: at least they
are reporting enough raw data in different formats that these kinds of
errors can come to light — that lesson should be kept in mind when
writing future requirements for voting machines.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/04/29/1712215

Links:
0. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1266
1. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1267
2. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1274
3. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1280
4. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1265