New Jersey: independent reivew of e-voting machines approved
Ars Techinca reports: 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. -- Review of NJ e-voting approved; won t be in time for election