Sequoia Voting Systems was a California-based company that is one of the largest providers of electronic voting systems in the U.S., having offices in Oakland, Denver and New York City. Some of its major competitors were Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and Election Systems & Software.
It was acquired by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems on June 4, 2010. At the time it had contracts for 300 jurisdictions in 16 states through its its BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems
Sharron Angle should start filing the lawsuits right now. Then again, so should Harry Reid. However, it might be a bit more difficult politically for the Senate majority leader, given the undeserved support Reid has shown in the past for Nevada's 100 percent unverifiable, error-prone, hackable, illegally-certified, electronic voting systems the state forces all voters to use at the polling place.
Given that the Angle/Reid contest in Nevada is likely to be among the closest - and most closely-watched - races for the US Senate this November 2, both parties would be wise to get to court and file for an order to ensure all of the hard drives, flash memory chips and memory cartridges to be used in their electronic voting machines during both early voting and on Election Day are securely retained for 22 months after the election.
The federal law requiring as much, Retention of Voting Documentation (42 USC. 1974 through 1974e), has, however, never been followed in any state to my knowledge, at least in regard to the sensitive memory cards and hard drives from electronic voting systems. Those devices hold both ballot programming and the way the computers have recorded - accurately or not - the way voters have voted. They might also hold the only evidence of any system malfunction or malfeasance. Nonetheless, officials routinely scrub those materials not long after the polls have closed. Key evidence - perhaps the only actual evidence - of how voters had hoped to vote and of any obstruction to that intent, is thereby lost forever.
The voting machine still used across the Silver State - the horrible, hackable, failure-prone Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen voting machines with VeriVote "paper trail" printer add-on - has a storied history. There is also a recent history of very close elections in Nevada. Consequently, both candidates would be wise to bring on experienced Election Integrity experts to advise them in what can and will go wrong with those voting systems this year.
Unfortunately, while Reid seems to have long been in denial about the unverifiability and outright failure of the systems used in his state, Angle has likely been duped into buying into her own party's propaganda about "voter fraud," when the real problem is election fraud ... or just plain failure.
With 100% of the precincts now reporting unofficial results, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg leads Justice David Prosser by a remarkably thin 204 votes out of some 1.5 million ballots cast in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race --- according to the computers that count votes in the state.
The unofficial numbers at this hour, according to AP's spreadsheet of those computer results, give Kloppenburg 740,090 votes to Prosser's 739,886.
Despite Kloppenburg's tiny reported lead, the race is virtual dead heat in what might otherwise be a little-noticed state Supreme Court election. The race, however, has been turned into a proxy battle between supporters of the state's controversial new Republican Gov. Scott Walker (who Prosser has allied himself with) and union workers and their supporters who oppose Walker and the state GOP's attempt to legislate away the freedom of citizens to collectively bargain through public worker unions. Outside groups, according to NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, are said to have spent a record $3.5 million on so-called "issue ads" to support their favored candidate in the closing days of the election.
The companies will work together to deliver complete solutions for state-sponsored online voting pilots for the November presidential election. The agreement combines Compaq's experience in delivering solutions to state and local governments with VoteHere.net's online voting software.
Compaq's iPAQ hardware will run VoteHere.net software to offer voting devices and online polling sites with connections to the Internet. VoteHere.net data centers will deliver accurate ballots over the Internet to each voter and collect and tabulate votes. Counties interested in providing online elections in 2001 will be able to deploy poll site packages, data center configurations, professional services, security devices, and the VoteHere Election System software. The Advanced Election Night Server solution, providing near real-time election results, will be made available to state governments.
"VoteHere has the technology, solid engineering, and experience to provide a solution that has secure authentication and preserves the American tradition of voting anonymously. We are excited about teaming with VoteHere to provide online voting through existing poll sites by providing our portfolio of hardware, professional services, and solutions," said Jim Weynand, Vice President, Government and Education Markets of Compaq Computer Corporation. "Compaq continues to serve the needs of state and local governments with cutting edge technology," added Weynand.
The VoteHere.net software addresses the public's concerns of security and ballot privacy using powerful encryption and advanced, patent-pending protocols. Online voting will be more efficient and cost-effective compared to the punch card, paper ballot and optical scan systems.
"We are looking forward to working with Compaq. The company's products, skills and customer relationships complement VoteHere well," said Jim Adler CEO of VoteHere.net. "Compaq has solid experience in state and local government systems and contracts. Teaming with Compaq gives us the technical feet on the street and systems reliability we need to deliver online voting solutions to counties across the country," commented Adler.
Voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) are an important technical subsystem that
supports transparency in computerized voting systems. An ideal VVPAT allows voters
to essentially disregard what is internal to the black box of computerized voting terminals
and know that as long as the VVPAT matches their intent, their vote will be counted.
In the United States, the debate over the past few years surrounding VVPATs has been
vigorous. However, states have begun to recognize the importance of recording a paperbased
audit trail verified by the voter at the time of casting their ballot. Twenty-six states
have passed laws requiring some form of a paper record to be produced by voting
systems.1
The market has responded to this trend and now all major vendors offer direct recording
electronic (DRE) voting systems with VVPAT capability. However, evidence shows that
these VVPAT subsystems were added subsequently to the design of the latest generation
of DRE products. Adding VVPAT as an afterthought in the design process resulted in
design flaws that have significant implications. This paper reviews why VVPATs are
important for transparency in paperless systems, the current crop of VVPAT offerings
from the major and minor voting system vendors in the US and then the implications that
their design flaws have for future VVPAT systems.
It was acquired by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems on June 4, 2010. At the time it had contracts for 300 jurisdictions in 16 states through its its BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems
Sharron Angle should start filing the lawsuits right now. Then again, so should Harry Reid. However, it might be a bit more difficult politically for the Senate majority leader, given the undeserved support Reid has shown in the past for Nevada's 100 percent unverifiable, error-prone, hackable, illegally-certified, electronic voting systems the state forces all voters to use at the polling place.
Given that the Angle/Reid contest in Nevada is likely to be among the closest - and most closely-watched - races for the US Senate this November 2, both parties would be wise to get to court and file for an order to ensure all of the hard drives, flash memory chips and memory cartridges to be used in their electronic voting machines during both early voting and on Election Day are securely retained for 22 months after the election.
The federal law requiring as much, Retention of Voting Documentation (42 USC. 1974 through 1974e), has, however, never been followed in any state to my knowledge, at least in regard to the sensitive memory cards and hard drives from electronic voting systems. Those devices hold both ballot programming and the way the computers have recorded - accurately or not - the way voters have voted. They might also hold the only evidence of any system malfunction or malfeasance. Nonetheless, officials routinely scrub those materials not long after the polls have closed. Key evidence - perhaps the only actual evidence - of how voters had hoped to vote and of any obstruction to that intent, is thereby lost forever.
The voting machine still used across the Silver State - the horrible, hackable, failure-prone Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen voting machines with VeriVote "paper trail" printer add-on - has a storied history. There is also a recent history of very close elections in Nevada. Consequently, both candidates would be wise to bring on experienced Election Integrity experts to advise them in what can and will go wrong with those voting systems this year.
Unfortunately, while Reid seems to have long been in denial about the unverifiability and outright failure of the systems used in his state, Angle has likely been duped into buying into her own party's propaganda about "voter fraud," when the real problem is election fraud ... or just plain failure.
With 100% of the precincts now reporting unofficial results, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg leads Justice David Prosser by a remarkably thin 204 votes out of some 1.5 million ballots cast in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race --- according to the computers that count votes in the state.
The unofficial numbers at this hour, according to AP's spreadsheet of those computer results, give Kloppenburg 740,090 votes to Prosser's 739,886.
Despite Kloppenburg's tiny reported lead, the race is virtual dead heat in what might otherwise be a little-noticed state Supreme Court election. The race, however, has been turned into a proxy battle between supporters of the state's controversial new Republican Gov. Scott Walker (who Prosser has allied himself with) and union workers and their supporters who oppose Walker and the state GOP's attempt to legislate away the freedom of citizens to collectively bargain through public worker unions. Outside groups, according to NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, are said to have spent a record $3.5 million on so-called "issue ads" to support their favored candidate in the closing days of the election.
The companies will work together to deliver complete solutions for state-sponsored online voting pilots for the November presidential election. The agreement combines Compaq's experience in delivering solutions to state and local governments with VoteHere.net's online voting software.
Compaq's iPAQ hardware will run VoteHere.net software to offer voting devices and online polling sites with connections to the Internet. VoteHere.net data centers will deliver accurate ballots over the Internet to each voter and collect and tabulate votes. Counties interested in providing online elections in 2001 will be able to deploy poll site packages, data center configurations, professional services, security devices, and the VoteHere Election System software. The Advanced Election Night Server solution, providing near real-time election results, will be made available to state governments.
"VoteHere has the technology, solid engineering, and experience to provide a solution that has secure authentication and preserves the American tradition of voting anonymously. We are excited about teaming with VoteHere to provide online voting through existing poll sites by providing our portfolio of hardware, professional services, and solutions," said Jim Weynand, Vice President, Government and Education Markets of Compaq Computer Corporation. "Compaq continues to serve the needs of state and local governments with cutting edge technology," added Weynand.
The VoteHere.net software addresses the public's concerns of security and ballot privacy using powerful encryption and advanced, patent-pending protocols. Online voting will be more efficient and cost-effective compared to the punch card, paper ballot and optical scan systems.
"We are looking forward to working with Compaq. The company's products, skills and customer relationships complement VoteHere well," said Jim Adler CEO of VoteHere.net. "Compaq has solid experience in state and local government systems and contracts. Teaming with Compaq gives us the technical feet on the street and systems reliability we need to deliver online voting solutions to counties across the country," commented Adler.
Voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) are an important technical subsystem that
supports transparency in computerized voting systems. An ideal VVPAT allows voters
to essentially disregard what is internal to the black box of computerized voting terminals
and know that as long as the VVPAT matches their intent, their vote will be counted.
In the United States, the debate over the past few years surrounding VVPATs has been
vigorous. However, states have begun to recognize the importance of recording a paperbased
audit trail verified by the voter at the time of casting their ballot. Twenty-six states
have passed laws requiring some form of a paper record to be produced by voting
systems.1
The market has responded to this trend and now all major vendors offer direct recording
electronic (DRE) voting systems with VVPAT capability. However, evidence shows that
these VVPAT subsystems were added subsequently to the design of the latest generation
of DRE products. Adding VVPAT as an afterthought in the design process resulted in
design flaws that have significant implications. This paper reviews why VVPATs are
important for transparency in paperless systems, the current crop of VVPAT offerings
from the major and minor voting system vendors in the US and then the implications that
their design flaws have for future VVPAT systems.
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