Votes May Actually Accurately Count In New Jersey -- Some Day

In a decision issued last week, superior court judge Linda R. Feinberg ruled that a technical review of voting machines used in New Jersey may proceed despite the objections of the manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems.

Serious problems emerged in five counties where Sequoia voting machines were used during the New Jersey presidential primaries. Audits conducted by election officials revealed that the electronic tallies didn't match the total counts from the paper trail generated by the machines. Sequoia attributes the problem to operator error and argued that it isn't indicative of a technical malfunction.

In response to that glitch and other irregularities, election officials from Union County decided decided to subject the voting machines to an independent review. They went to Ed Felten, a voting machine security expert who serves as the director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Although preliminary evidence from the audit indicated the potential presence of some serious malfunctions, Union County decided not to go forward with the review after receiving legal threats from Sequoia. The voting machine company claimed that an unauthorized third-party review would violate the county's license agreement. Sequoia also argued that unauthorized examinations expose the its proprietary trade secrets to public disclosure and threaten its intellectual property rights.

Judge Feinberg, who is tasked with evaluating whether or not the machines should be scrapped and taken out of active use in New Jersey, ruled that the independent review requested by voting rights advocates can go forward, but must be conducted in a manner that protects Sequoia's trade secrets. A protective order will be drafted that specifies limits on public disclosures of sensitive information. The judge also decided that the review will be conducted on two machines—one that exhibited problems and one that did not—from Bergen County. Sequoia is satisfied with the ruling and will cooperate with the review. "We believe this result protects both the public's interest and Sequoia's legitimate rights in its intellectual property and trade secrets," a Sequoia spokesperson told the Associated Press.

The trial is set to begin in September, which means that the court will not reach its decision about the reliability of the machines in time to stop them from being used in the November elections. Widespread use of the machines could still be blocked if New Jersey's Governor or Secretary of State decide to take action.

Red Team testing of Sequoia's voting machines conducted by researchers in California revealed a number of extreme security flaws and vulnerabilities. Testers were able to manipulate election data with a trojan horse that was surreptitiously loaded onto the machines. The election data cards were easy to modify because the checksums used by the machines to validate the authenticity of the cards is stored on the cards themselves.

Judge Feinberg's ruling is welcomed by voting rights advocates who have argued that third-party review is needed to ensure that the election process is fair and transparent. Our previous analysis of voting machine security issues show that the technology is ripe for abuse. A thorough review conducted by the experts at Princeton could help to resolve some of the unanswered questions about the irregularities that occurred during the primaries, but won't do much to help New Jersey voters in the upcoming presidential election.

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