Sunday, October 12, 2008


Friendly: soft

With US elections four weeks away, visions of glitches history and present are dancing in the heads of tech observers bracing for November 4. It may not help that one referee is suppressing the consequences of an e-voting equipment test.

A New Sport shirt referee has ruled that testing consequences from Sequoia e-voting equipment used in that position are not to be released until further notice.

The report, based on testing done over the summer by Princeton university lecturer Andrew Appel and a squad of central processing unit scientists, was presented to Adjudicator Linda Feinberg on September 2; according to the accord the position reached with persons scientists, they were free to publish their conclusion 30 being later. But on September 24, Adjudicator Feinberg withdrew that authorization -- leave-taking even New Sport shirt s own elected representatives wondering what s in there.

The equipment in query are Sequoia AVC Lead touch-screen DRE units. The business was the first to make pains toward providing voter-verifiable piece examination trails -- printed receipt-type tapes that allegedly show that any given elector s election was recorded by the central processing unit as the elector wished it to be.

The grievance Gusciora v. McGreevey began four being ago this month, with plaintiffs from the Rutgers Constitutional Lawsuit Consulting room claiming that the use of DRE equipment lacking a verifiable piece trail is unconstitutional. The casing was dismissed by a examination court, bumped up to Appeals, sent rear down to the lower court, and ended up payments several being with Adjudicator Feinberg monitoring position conformity with new legislation requiring piece trails.

When the position wasn t able to implement appropriate equipment by early 2008, it appeared that nix e-voting tech inspections would be done at all, but after an chorus of disapproval and, allegedly, intimidation from the firm the courtyard ordered that the plaintiffs -- though not famed e-voting examiner Ed Felten -- be given selection equipment and basis regulations for intensive study.

Sequoia grumbled about creation licensing , but they complied. The commentary went to the courtyard in September -- and there, according to Dr. Appel s blog , it waits.

Meanwhile, some Sequoia equipment are reported to be behaving oddly in Florida s Palm Seaside County, where two of the 400-C optical-scanner counting equipment used by officials there re-counted a digit of previously rejected piece ballots from a recent judicial pursuit and un-rejected them. Further tests are not expected, since the equipment must be made ready for November 4, a procedure that willl include changing the software.



A tape produced by researchers at the Campus of California at Santa Barbara purports to show how selection equipment can be compromised and modified by a disease that steals votes from unsuspecting users.

YouTube continues to play an unusual ingredient in the ongoing e-voting controversy. Safekeeping researchers at UCSB have posted multiple videos performance how to hack Sequoia s Edge-model machines, and Princeton central processing unit scientists though none of the squad currently involved in the Sequoia testing famously posted video recording of their successful Diebold AccuVote-TS hack in 2006.

On the lighter side, Jason Osgood, Washington Position s Democratic aspirant for Desk of State, has made e-voting an important ingredient of his platform, and has posted two fight ads 1 viewable here , and 2 viewable here from YouTube in the technique of the I m a Mac I m a Laptop ads. True to shape for the region, the unsympathetic e-voting appliance is portrayed as a sleazy California category -- one that can t lever humidity.
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