ElectionGuardians exposes
Touchscreen Security Fiasco
A week after the primary election of March 2, 2004, it was discovered that in at least three precincts around the Coachella Valley, the Sequoia Pacific touchscreen voting machines were sitting around in unlocked rooms, easily accessible by the public.
There are two main reasons this is important:
1. Data integrity
a. According to the Registrar of Voters, the machines contain the redundant memory of the election. She has assured voters that if something ever happened to the cartridges, the machines had the
information.
b. Re-count - according to the re-count procedure, to verify the data, the cartridge needs to be inserted into the machine in which it was originally used. The two totals must balance to prove the data count. Machines left
sitting around for a week could have been damaged, or data could have been compromised.
2. Cost
a. These machines cost about $4,000 each. We saw 5 in Cathedral City, 10 in Desert Hot Springs and 5 in Palm Desert. That’s $80,000 of equipment sitting around in
• a clubhouse, accessible to anyone walking down the street in Cathedral City, and
• in the senior center, again open to the public, and
• in the drama room of a high school, with students and others coming and going.
The machines are on little carts, and can be easily rolled out of the room.
b. This is major disregard for taxpayers’ investment in voting equipment.
Below are the photos of the machines in Desert Hot Springs and Palm Desert. (Click photo to enlarge.)
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March 7, 2004 Desert Hot Springs Senior Center – during a dance.
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March 7, 2004, Desert Hot Springs Senior Center.
The dancers just put the punch and ice next to $40,000 worth of touchscreen voting machines.
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March 7, 2004, Desert Hot Springs Senior Center. Shows the front door open to passers-by.
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March 7, 2004, Desert Hot Springs Senior Center
Refreshment table next to the machines, people dancing around them. |
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March 8, 2004, Palm Desert HS
The drama room was accessible to students and adults every day after the election. This was at 6pm on Monday evening, door was unlocked.
It is not the school’s responsibility to secure the voting machines.
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March 8, 2004, Palm Desert HS .
The drama room was accessible to students and adults every day after the election. This was at 6pm on Monday evening, door was unlocked.
It is not the school’s responsibility to secure the voting machines.
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