- Dear All,
-
- The following is largely self explanatory. It concerns
the release of more voting machine source code into the wild. It is important
- for reasons that are made clear in the body of the blurb - that it receive
as much attention as possible as quick as possible...
-
- I urge you to send it out on your lists, link it, blog
it & draw it to the attention of your superiors, i.e. whatever it takes
to get the message out as far and as wide as possible as quickly as possible.
-
- Yours sincerely
- Alastair Thompson
- Scoop.co.nz
-
- Sequoia Voting Code Released
- Sludge Report #162 -
- Friday, 2 April 2004
- Column: C.D. Sludge
-
- Earlier today Scoop published a report from Blackboxvoting.org's
Bev Harris about holes in the Sequoia vote tabulation software.
-
- Arguably this is the biggest new development in the black
box voting saga since this column announced the release into the wild of
the full contents of the Diebold FTP website. The Diebold FTP site contained
the source code tree for the Diebold touchscreen software, numerous installation
versions of the GEMs vote counting software, and manuals for numerous Diebold
Election Systems programs.
-
- Bev Harris's latest report details not only how insecure
the Sequoia vote tabulation software is - and it appears to be if anything
worse than Diebold's offering - but also asks specific questions about
the conduct of Sequoia staff and election officials in Riverside County
California during the March 2 election this year.
-
- Click on the book cover below to read the story in full
-
-
-
-
- http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0404/S00024.htm
- Bev Harris: Inside Sequoia's Vote Counting Program
- The story can also be read on Bev Harris's activist website:
- http://www.BlackBoxVoting.org
-
- This column contends that, like the Diebold software,
the Sequoia WinEds ssoftware clearly requires extensive academic examination.
The download address for the file is:
-
-
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/WinEDS200.zip
- This column does not know how long this address will
remain live however. Therefore Look for other mirror URLs here - http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup.
And please send advice on any mirror URLs to editor@scoop
- .co.nz.
-
-
- Why This Software Is Being Released In This Way
-
- We have learned over the past couple of years of investigation
into black box voting that public scrutiny of the source code of voting
systems is a key to making progress.
-
- Up till July 8th 2003 Bev Harris, Scoop and others who
had been highlighting this very serious issue had esperienced almost zero
success in getting either the mainstream media, academics or political
officials to even ask
- questions of the vendors of what is now shown to be
clearly toxic technology.
-
- Immediately following publication of the download address
for the Diebold GEMs software in this column in July last year this changed
overnight.
-
- A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University led
by Avi Rubin downloaded the code, examined it in detail and published a
damning report that was in turn responsible for bringing the entire Black
Box Voting issue in
- to the public light via a New York Times report of July
26th.
-
- That report led in turn to:
- - an damning official report commissioned by the State
of Maryland by SAIC;
- - a second damning official report commissioned in Maryland
from RABA;
- - The New York Times launching a series of articles on
the subject;
- - extensive media coverage of the dangers of paperless
electronic voting on every major US TV network;
- - dramatically increased support for legislative efforts
in Washington to require auditable paper ballots to be produced by all
machines;
- - The State of California auditing its Diebold software
and finding that not a single county had properly certified software installed;
- - Vanity Fair publishing an indepth investigative article
on the subject as the lead feature in its April 2004 issue;
- - and much much more besides
-
- It follows therefore that the release of the Sequoia
Code into the wild is an equally important development in this story.
-
-
- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/WinEDS200.zip
-
- This column therefore requests that everybody who is
able to - please post links to this story. Please also post links to Bev
Harris's latest story about the Sequoia files. And most important of all,
please download the file and if you can host it on your own website and
send us the mirror URL.
-
- http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0404/S00028.htm
-
-
- # # ENDS # #
|
