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City relying on suspect voting machines

Friday, August 17 at 12:00 AM

By Lisa Jones

‘Defective or unacceptable.”

That’s what California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said about Sequoia voting equipment and software. On Aug. 3, she decertified the use of some products in California elections, and imposed strict conditions on others.

Denver will rely on these questionable Sequoia products during the school board and bond-measure election in November.

According to studies conducted by the University of California for Bowen’s office:

“The [Sequoia] software suffers from numerous programming errors, many of which have a high potential to introduce or exacerbate security weaknesses ... .

“In general, the software does not reflect defensive software engineering practices normally associated with high-assurance critical systems ... .

“Some of these problems lead to potentially exploitable vulnerabilities that we identified ... .
“ ... the presence of such errors reduces our overall confidence in the soundness of the system as a whole.”

The California report might sound vaguely familiar to Denver voters.

After last year’s Election Day debacle, a consultant hired by the city concluded that our vote-center meltdown was caused by custom Sequoia software that was “very poorly designed and fundamentally flawed.”

Sequoia’s voter registration software crashed, causing three-hour lines at the polls last November. Fred Hessler of Fujitsu Consulting reported to the mayor about the software, saying: “It does not meet or even approach professional standards.”

Should Denver voters be worried about the 2008 election?

Beefed-up voting security rules issued by the Colorado Secretary of State last year may offer some peace of mind. Safeguards such as surveillance cameras and tamper-resistant seals on voting equipment are supposed to protect the integrity of elections in Colorado.

But Matt Bishop, principal investigator in the California study, opined that security requires several layers, not just a presumably secure physical environment.

In a report overview, Bishop wrote that implementing external security measures to thwart possible attacks on voting systems “in no way relieves vendors of their responsibility to locate, repair and fix the vulnerabilities in their products that these attacks exploit.”

Some might wonder why Denver continues to use Sequoia as its election-services vendor.
Denver doesn’t have much choice. Other vendors fared as poorly as Sequoia in the California tests.

Also, Denver is “locked in” to the company, having spent millions of dollars to purchase Sequoia voting machines, ballot scanners and associated software. The products are proprietary, requiring the city to use Sequoia for maintenance and service.

Denver plans to spend approximately $360,000 in November on Sequoia services, including software licenses, ballot printing, postage and mailing.

In recent elections, Sequoia has copped to costly mistakes such as misprinting ballots, and embarrassing errors such as miscalculating postage. Yet Denver keeps throwing money at the company.

Prior to last year’s debacle, election officials were preparing to request another $5 million in city funds to purchase updated touch-screen voting machines from Sequoia. These machines will be needed to meet new state rules requiring voter-verified paper trails.

It seems unlikely that the city will reduce its dependence on Sequoia any time soon.

On a bright note, Michael Scarpello will take the helm as Denver’s new director of elections on Monday. In his previous job, Scarpello helped a Nebraska county to program its own election equipment rather than outsourcing the work.

Maybe Scarpello will find cost-effective ways to “in-source” more of Denver’s election functions.
Elections are perhaps only as secure and reliable as the software and machinery running the show. For now, Denver democracy depends on a vendor whose products and services have a shaky track record.

Lisa Jones is a freelance writer in Denver. Reach her at lisa@deardenver.com.

READER COMMENTS

And they all want amnesty for millions ?

What a joke! We can't even get our voting
machines right, for us to vote in 08.

And they want amnesty A-Z..when?

Posted by what a joke! on August 19, 2007 03:49 PM

This should scare us. With the democrats running the show, we could end up with the dead voting, massive voter fraud and democrats like Mayor Daley running the show.... EEEK!

Posted by Dravur on August 17, 2007 07:04 AM