Sequoia Vote Machines Hacked!
It finally happened - what the Election Reform Network and countless computer security experts and election integrity advocates have been saying all along: Sequoia electronic vote machines - specifically the Sequoia AVC Advantage - those used in Montgomery County and other places across the country - can be hacked! And according to a computer scientist it doesn't take very much to do it. In fact, it took one of Professor Andrew Appel's grad students about seven seconds to pick the lock in the back of a machine.
From there, you just open the door and unscrew a metal cover, providing easy access to the motherboard and computer chips. Substitute new chips for the old and the machine can be reprogrammed to wreak havoc with vote counts.
This is hyperbole, right? You're thinking that maybe it's theoretically possible, but not in the real world. It would take computer whizzes hours of arduous stratospheric mental labor, you say. Well, think again. The chips can be replaced in about ten minutes by someone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in computer science, according to Appel.
Here's how Professor Appel tells it: "We can take a version of Sequoia's software program and modify it to do something different - like appear to count votes, but really move them from one candidate to another. And it can be programmed to do that only on Tuesdays in November, and at any other time. You can't detect it."
If the machines are so vulnerable, then why wasn't it demonstrated before this? Because Appel's study of the five machines he bought off of the internet for $82 (normally retailing for about $40,000) represents the first time that someone who hasn't signed a non-disclosure agreement with Sequoia has been able to examine them. Not exactly emblematic of the transparency and openness that we prize as the underpinnings of democracy. Unfortunately, that is still how things work in the voting biz.
Sequoia's response to the hack in part is that the machines are supposed to have tamper-evident seals on them to detect if someone has accessed the central processing unit. However, the machines certified by the PA Secretary of State last October had no seals and their insertion was supposed to be a key condition for approval by the Commonwealth. But to be a real deterrence, the seals are supposed to be accounted for by a numerical registration system administered by the vendor, which, if it exists at all, is easily undermined by foul-ups between the vendor and election officials. In addition, while Sequoia claims that tight "chain of custody procedures" guard against unwarranted access to the machines, the vote systems typically sit unattended in church basements and school gymnasiums for days prior to elections.
The problem of insecure, unreliable and unverifiable electronic vote machines, of course, goes well beyond Sequoia and Fundamentally, there is nothing new here. Over the last two years there has been an avalanche of evidence indicating the vulnerability of these machines. The National Institute of Standards and Technology staff recently reported that electronic vote machines "cannot be made secure" without a paper record and recommended a requirement for "software independent" voting systems inserted in future standards. In addition,studies by the Brennan Center for Justice and Princeton Professor Edward W. Felten(Click here) demonstrate unequivocally that electronic vote machines are vulnerable to software attacks. There are better, safer and more reliable - not to mention cheaper - voting systems out there, and it's time that jurisdictions like Montgomery County and Philadelphia take note.
The good news is that there is finally some movement in the Congress to address the dangers of electronic voting. However, even if a decent law establishing a workable paper record system makes it through the legislative maze (an amended Holt bill is the best hope), it will still be up to local officials to make the tough decisions to protect our elections, especially where these machines already exist. Are you listening, Commissioners? For more details, see the following:
