We been listening to a long interview with Joanne Rajoppi, county clerk in New Jersey's Union County. Although that county has been using Sequoia voting machines for some years, this year there were serious discrepancies between the memory cartridge of the machines and the paper tape showing the votes. She contacted other county clerks in other NJ counties who had found the same problems. Here's the New York Times editorial on the subject yesterday.
At least five of New Jersey’s 21 counties have reported discrepancies in the tallies of a small number of their machines. Election officials insist that the inconsistencies, which involve the number of Republican and Democratic voters casting ballots, do not affect the accuracy of the vote counts, but there is no way to be sure.
When the Union County clerk, Joanne Rajoppi, learned of the problem, she did the responsible thing and moved to have a respected independent computer scientist from Princeton University examine the faulty machines. The machines’ manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems, responded by threatening to sue.
Actually, it was the statewide County Clerk's association which contacted the Princeton computer scientist. But Sequoia rejected the notion, threatening the state with a law suit. They would hire their own "independent" consultant to look into the matter. Let's also note that Rajoppi had first notified Sequoia of the problem. They did not return her call. Instead, they came out with a press statement blaming poll workers.
Sequoia, which says the discrepancies were because of human error by poll workers, insists that allowing an outsider to access its equipment would endanger its “trade secrets.” Instead, it is hiring its own consultant to assess what went wrong.
That is unacceptable. Sequoia’s consultant would work for the company, not for the public. It is unlikely to come up with findings that put its client in a bad light. That’s particularly true in this case since Sequoia has shown how eager it is to file lawsuits.
County officials from around the state, including Ms. Rajoppi, have asked Anne Milgram, the state’s attorney general, to intercede to assure an independent analysis. David Wald, a spokesman for Ms. Milgram, has said that she is satisfied with Sequoia’s arrangement.
Actually, Milgram at first seemed amenable to the Princeton investigation. And then, evidently, Sequoia threatened the state with mayhem. The editors at Newark Star Ledger sees it this way:
It's time the state started playing hardball with the company that makes and maintains 10,000 of New Jersey's voting machines.
At issue is the accuracy and dependability of the electronic machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems of Colorado. In the Feb. 5 presidential primary, discrepancies were discovered in a handful of machines in five counties, including Mercer County. The number of Democrats and Republicans casting ballots did not match when the cartridge printouts from the machines were compared against the paper-tape backup inside the devices.
And they take exception to Sequoia's threat and the weak knees of the state's attorney general.
It seems feasible to work out a deal with Sequoia to have a third party review their software under the condition that their trade secrets not be compromised. But it looks as though Sequoia is determined to hide behind its stone wall of secrecy at the expense of accountability.
Since Sequoia's threat of a lawsuit has effectively derailed county efforts to have an independent study of its machines, the state attorney general must step up to the plate and demand that Sequoia play ball.
The attorney general is vested with the power and responsibility of overseeing the election process and we urge Attorney General Anne Milgram to use her power to en sure the accuracy of our elections.
