Linda Evans [who did quality control for Sequoia for more than seven years] recalls the chad testing of ballots manufactured for the 2000 election.
Linda Evans: Chads were falling out. Chads were hanging up. We've got a machine that we call a gang punch, which in a sense punches out all the holes at the same time. You slide the card in there and you pull down the handle and it punches out all the holes. They weren't punching out. They were hanging up all over the place. They were aware of that. Oh, management was aware of it. We told 'em.
The behavior of the Sequoia management in the days leading up to the election was highly suspicious. When employees complained about the falling quality of their product, they were continually reassured, “It’ll be okay.” For those of us who have been following the computerized election machine debacle over the last few years, that sounds remarkably similar to the vendor mantra, “Trust us.”
Walter Rantanen, “perhaps the country’s leading forensic paper analyst,” delivers nothing less than a bombshell on the program. His analysis showed that none of the card stock tested from Palm Beach County was actually produced by Boise Cascade, despite Sequoia’s assurances, faux (Xeroxed) labels, and shipping invoices to the contrary. Boise Cascade confirmed Rantanen’s claim when it examined a sample Florida 2000 ballot he sent them. So, where did the low-quality, chad-prone paper come from? A huge and highly relevant question. Further, the manner in which the ballots were produced was counter to traditional guidelines and standards. This practice threw the ballots out of alignment, and aggravated by the poor quality paper stock, could easily have led to the infamous hanging chads. This threw 2000 into question, launching HAVA and the next sordid chapter in our election history.
After the election, Brian Lehrman, the plant manager in Exeter, ordered the crew to “get rid of everything” that had anything to do with Florida because news teams wanted to tour the plant. The workers’ fearful assessment was in fact correct – 2000 had spelled the end of punch-card voting. And after that election, Sequoia went from successful purveyor of a winning punch-card system to the far more lucrative sales of touch-screen voting machines, worth millions of dollars in Florida alone. The evidence brought forth in this special indicates that this company was poised to take advantage of a situation that they precipitated themselves.
As one of the Sequoia employees points out, if it’s true that the company purposely subverted our elections, they should be made to pay. It’s a serious charge that should be fully investigated. But, if the allegations are substantiated, how exactly would the guilty parties pay? Could a monetary fine of whatever magnitude make up for what’s been done to our country, to our dead and wounded soldiers, to our devastated economy, badly tarnished national image, to our courts skewed irrevocably rightward, and to the broken and battered citizens of New Orleans? The list goes on and on. While we might all wish to press the rewind button and somehow go back prior to Election Night 2000, that simply is not an option. What can we do besides throw up our hands?
What is possible is to go forward into any proposed election reform with our eyes wide open. We should not accept what anyone says without proof – whether they are vendors, supposed experts, elections officials, or legislators in our nation’s capital. Computer security analyst Bruce Schneier, in his August 15 newsletter, discusses the California “top-to-bottom” review of the voting systems. http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0708.html Unlike others who have rushed to praise SoS Bowen for the unprecedented analysis, Schneier assesses it differently. It’s worth taking a close look at his perspective. He says,
The reviewers were given an unrealistic timetable and had trouble getting much documentation. The fact that major security vulnerabilities were found in all machines is a testament to how poorly they were designed, not to the thoroughness of the analysis.
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