You can’t test our product unless you use our rigged test
March 23rd, 2008
Sequoia Voting Systems has threatened possible legal action if a Princeton University professor independently analyzes the company’s electronic voting machines for a New Jersey county.
Union County leaders requested a review after paper records showing the number of voters that cast ballots in each party didn’t match the machine’s printouts.
The company said this week that it will “vigorously protect and defend its intellectual property and enforcement of established licensing agreements.” Sequoia released two statements explaining its stance on independent reviews of its e-voting machines after Princeton University professor Ed Felton received an e-mail warning him of legal action if he followed through with a request by New Jersey officials to examine Sequoia’s e-voting machines.
The company said that it allows top-to-bottom reviews of e-voting machines within the framework of its license rights and according to arrangements between Sequoia and governmental agencies legally authorized to conduct reviews.
“Sequoia welcomes all such responsibly executed review activities,” the company explained in a statement. “Sequoia does not support any and all unauthorized activities that violate or circumvent our product licensing agreements. Licensing agreements are standard practice in the technology industry, including the elections industry and have been for decades.”
I hope everyone with the slightest shred of intelligence realizes that Sequoia is scamming the voting public. There’s a reason e-voting was kicked the fuck out of California, and that’s because it was completely unreliable AND you could hack it with a blackberry cellphone while sitting in your car outside of the polling station. Good thing New Jersey had a paper trail, otherwise they would have been scammed, either intentionally, or more likely just because the voting systems are so ’sensitive’ (i.e. shitty pieces of software that wouldn’t stand up under a non-managed review) that they just failed through sheer incompetence on the part o Sequoia. Why else would they have clauses in their contract saying that you may not test their machines in any unapproved method? I can damned well assure you any hacker is going to be testing their machine in an unapproved method.