Princeton Exposes More Voting Machines
Update: Photos and first person account of this story are here.
Another Princeton University scientist has hacked into another brand of voting machine. It took seven seconds to pick the lock. Then he wrote vote-stealing software that would run only on a certain Tuesday in November. He said the machine was a hacker’s dream. They are used all over New Jersey.
Last summer it was Diebold stuff that came under the knife at Princeton. Similar Diebolds are used in Iowa.
This time it was Sequoia voting machines. They had been sold on the internet by officials in North Carolina. The Princeton man spent $82 to get 5 of them. Recently New Jersey bought nearly identical devices for $8,000 each. Over 100 machines were sold from GovDeals.com. The Princeton purchaser points out that
He is confident his students and other recent buyers of 136 Sequoia machines sold on GovDeals.com — where bidders also can find surplus coffins, locomotives and World War I cannons — will crack Sequoia’s code.
Then, he said, it will be fairly simple for anyone with bad intentions and a screwdriver to swap Sequoia’s memory chips for reprogrammed ones.
Don’t tear your hair out just yet: I’ve only told half the story.
The other half is an allegation that NJ never tests its voting machines, despite state law saying they must do so. New Jersey law is remarkably like Iowa law. Three examiners (same as in Iowa) get paid $150 each (same as in Iowa) by the voting machines company (same as in Iowa) to examine the machine for compliance with vague criteria (same as in Iowa).
Have no faith in paperless voting machines. No one is minding the store.
Thanks to John Gideon of Voter’s Unite for calling attention to this NJ story. John’s been doing this sort of work for two or three years now. He is one of my main tipsters.