NJ: Sequoia on Trial for Reliability

Voting device on trial for reliability

Court wants to determine if machine's accuracy can be verified on paper

Friday, March 17, 2006

BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff

The state's most commonly used voting machine went on trial yesterday in a Mercer County courtroom.

Howard Cramer, vice president for sales at Sequoia Voting Systems, testified its electronic voting machines can be retrofitted to produce a paper record of votes cast by 2008, the deadline set by a law enacted last summer. He said it would cost about $2,000 to upgrade each of the 8,000 Sequoia machines currently used, a total of $16 million.

But under cross-examination by Penny Venetis, a lawyer with the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, Cramer admitted his company is still working out problems in a prototype of its paper ballot printer and could not guarantee when it will be commercially available.

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A state appeals court has reserved judgment on whether the machines used at the polls are so unreliable they violate the constitutional rights of voters. Before it rules, it wants to know whether the entire controversy is moot because all machines will soon produce paper trails that can be used to verify the accuracy of their tallies. It ordered Feinberg to find out.

So yesterday, Feinberg listened intently and frequently asked questions as Cramer described, in detail, which circuit boards would have to be replaced to upgrade the machines on which most New Jerseyans cast their ballots.

That machine is the Sequoia AVC Advantage, which is popular with election officials because it allows the voter to see all the candidates at once on a single screen. Critics contend its electronic vote tally is vulnerable to tampering and cannot be verified.

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Cramer said it should be commercially available "at the latest, early next year," but is still in "the prototype stage."

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http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1142580553274430.xml&coll=1

promised Mercer county NJ the VVPB printers. Mercer bought the Sequoia Advantage and then asked for the printers, they were told to go buy new equipment. The Advantage is based on the 1975 Zilog Z-80 CPU, Chip. About 6 mghz IIRC.