Secret Computer Election Codes Made Public
RIVERSIDE – One election watchdog group claims they found the secret computer codes for local electronic voting machines. They’ve posted these codes on the internet for everyone to see. But, the voting machine company and Riverside County election officials say the voting machines remain safe.
Electronic voting has long been controversial. Instead of paper ballots, voters just need to trust the marks they make on a voting machine will stay accurate. While there is no proof a local election has been changed by hackers, the worries remain.
Once-secret computer codes were just posted on the internet. The Election Defense Alliance claims this computer code runs the machines and proves the vulnerability of the Sequoia Company products used in Riverside County.
The Election Defense Alliance says they asked Riverside County’s Registrar Of Voters for the databases on the past election through a Public Records Act request. The Registrar received the information from Sequoia Voting Systems, the same information that is now in dispute.
The makers of the voting machines tell News Channel 3, “We did remove the proprietary information but did not thoroughly redact it, leaving text base remnants of various database level code “
They add, “Sequoia regrets this error as we work diligently to protect our existing proprietary copyrighted material.”
When asked if people’s votes were safe, Riverside County Chief Deputy Registrar Wayne Beckham replies, “Absolutely. The California Secretary of State brought together 70 of the finest computer scientists in the world. At the conclusion of a 3 month long process, at the cost of slightly more than $1 million dollars, she concluded the systems were accurate and safe enough to be used by the state of California and recertified them in August 2007.”
Various computer programming groups are now debating online the importance of the voting machine codes now available on the internet.
The electronic voting machines often show up in early voting periods. Because this November’s election is small, the County will stick to paper ballots this time. But, the electronic voting machines will be back. Whether people still have confidence in them will be seen next year.
Read the findings from the Election Defense Alliance and their posting of the controversial computer codes: http://studysequoia.wikispaces.com/
See differing opinions from other computer programmers:
“It has come to our attention that there are several blog postings regarding the possession of Sequoia’s source code by the “Election Defense Alliance” and we would like to address those claims.
Sequoia routinely assists our customers in responding to requests for information from the public regarding our source code and election data. We often provide election databases that remove all Sequoia copyrighted proprietary information leaving only data and log information. However, in a recent instance in Riverside County, California, we did remove the proprietary information but did not thoroughly redact it, leaving text base remnants of various database level code related to various operations including portions of stored procedures and schema creation code.
There was no source code related to the voting machines – the code that actually counts votes – released or any front-end Election Management System code. Essentially only small portions of ballot layout, accumulation and reporting code were present in this database that Sequoia provided to Riverside County.
The version of our code discussed above is WinEDS v. 3.1.12, which is not the most recent iteration of Sequoia’s voting system source code. WinEDS 3.1.12 was federally certified in January 2006 by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), which was the federal certification authority at that time. This code has been thoroughly tested – including a line-by-line review of all source code including the voting machine, database, and front-end code by NASED’s Independent Testing Authorities (ITAs) labs that were part of the NASED certification process. Additionally, this code was tested and reviewed during the California Secretary of State’s Top-To-Bottom-Review (TTBR) of the State’s voting systems.
More recent iterations of Sequoia’s source code starting with WinEDS version 3.74 encrypts all of this code within the database which prevents this type of situation.
Considering the thoroughness of the CA TTBR, it is unlikely that any new revelations will be revealed by further analysis of this limited code released.
Sequoia regrets this error as we work diligently to protect our existing proprietary copyrighted material.
