Sequoia won’t let people test their voting machines
March 18, 2008 – 1:47 pm
Ed Felten has built a reputation as someone good at finding problems with machines. New Jersey election officials wanted him to test one of the Sequoia voting machines before the election to see if there are any problems with it. Given the wide array of problems with voting machines in the recent past, this seems like a wise move.
Sequoia doesn’t like it. In a letter to Professor Felton, they say:
…certain New Jersey election officials have stated that they plan to send to you one or more Sequoia Advantage voting machines for analysis. I want to make you aware that if the County does so, it violates their established Sequoia licensing Agreement for use of the voting system. Sequoia has also retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis. We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property.
If I was an election official in New Jersey, I would drop those machines as quickly as I could. They’ve gone from possibly having a security hole discovered (or maybe coming out clean), to looking like a company with a big problem to hide.
