The New Jersey primary on Feb 5th, 2008 led to reports of serious problems with Sequoia voting machines. See below for our letter to NJ Attorney General Anne Milgram calling for a full investigation to address these problems.
Dear Attorney General Milgram:
Local newspapers recently reported that election administrators in Mercer, Union, Ocean, Bergen, Gloucester and Middlesex counties discovered that some of the Sequoia Advantage voting machines reported incorrect ballot counts in the February 5th presidential primary.
From these news accounts, we believe that this problem most probably indicates a serious software error, one that suggests the possibility of deeper problems that could significantly impact the integrity of elections run on Sequoia Advantage voting machines. We urge the Attorney General’s office to treat this problem with the highest concern and suggest that the State immediately impound the troubled machines along with a sample of machines from the same jurisdictions that did not exhibit the problem. We then ask that the State appoint an independent team of experts to examine the machines, their source code, and if necessary their binary code, for any errors that may explain the discrepancies.
Having studied and investigated voting machine performance in great depth, we would be happy to offer the Attorney General’s office any assistance we may be able to provide in addressing this critical matter.
Thank you very much for your attention to this serious problem. We look forward to working with you.
Respectfully Yours,
Holly Jacobson
Director, VoterAction.org
VotersUnite.org
Dr. Andrew Appel, Princeton University
Irene Goldman, Director, New Jersey Coalition for Peace Action
Dr. David Jefferson, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories
Pamela Smith, President Verified Voting Foundation
Renee Steinhagen, Director, New Jersey Appleseed
Penny Venetis, Rutgers University Constitutional Law Clinic
Dr. Dan Wallach, Rice University
*Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only*