Sequoia Voting Systems
Encyclopedia
Sequoia Voting Systems was a California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

-based company that is one of the largest providers of electronic voting
Electronic voting
Electronic voting is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes....

 systems in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, having offices in Oakland, Denver and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Some of its major competitors were Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and Election Systems & Software
Election Systems & Software
Election Systems & Software is an American company that provides voting services.ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group, LLC, which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Company, the publisher of Nebraska's largest newspaper. As of 2007 it was the largest manufacturer of...

.

It was acquired by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems
Dominion Voting Systems
Dominion Voting Systems is a privately-owned Denver-based company that sells electronic voting machines.In August 2010, Dominion reported that it has contracts to provide electronic voting systems to 600 jurisdictions in some 22 states of the United States, and has deployed 80,000 Dominion...

 on June 4, 2010. At the time it had contracts for 300 jurisdictions in 16 states through its BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems.

Company history

Sequoia was involved with voting systems for more than 100 years. At the end of the 19th century, Sequoia invented the lever-action mechanical voting system. Many machines of this type are still used today in some U.S. jurisdictions. In the 1980s Sequoia was bought by Jefferson Smurfit, an Irish printing conglomerate which in turn sold it to De La Rue
De La Rue
De La Rue plc is a British security printing, papermaking and cash handling systems company headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire. It also has a factory on the Team Valley Trading Estate, Gateshead, and other facilities at Loughton, Essex and Bathford, Somerset...

, a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 currency paper printing and security company. After losing money for several years, on March 8, 2005, Sequoia was acquired by Smartmatic
Smartmatic
Smartmatic is a multinational company founded in 2000 that specializes in the design and deployment of complex purpose-specific technology solutions aimed at helping governments to fulfill their commitments toward their citizens.It is organized around three business units: Electronic voting...

, a multi-national technology company which had developed advanced election systems, voting machines included. Thereafter Smartmatic assigned a major portion of its development and managerial teams, dedicated to revamping some of Sequoia's old-fashioned, legacy voting machines, and replacing their technology with avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

proprietary features and developments, which resulted in new, high-tech products. As a result, Sequoia sold many new-generation election products and experienced a healthy financial resurrection during the fiscal years of 2006 and 2007. However in November 2007, following a verdict by the CFIUS
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an inter-agency committee of the United States Government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in U.S. companies or operations. Chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, CFIUS includes representatives...

, Smartmatic was ordered to sell Sequoia, which it did to its Sequoia managers having U.S. citizenship.

California decertification/recertification

On August 3, 2007, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen
Debra Bowen
Debra Lynn Bowen , a member of the Democratic Party, has been Secretary of State of California since January 8, 2007. Before that she was a member of the California State Legislature from 1992 to 2006. In March 2008, she was given the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Presidential...

 withdrew approval and granted conditional reapproval to Sequoia Voting Systems optical scan
Optical scan voting system
An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results.-History:...

 and DRE voting machine
DRE voting machine
A direct-recording electronic voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter ; that processes data by means of a computer program; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components...

s after a "review of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007" found "significant security weaknesses throughout the Sequoia system" and "pervasive structural weaknesses" which raise "serious questions as to whether the Sequoia software can be relied upon to protect the integrity of elections."

“Hanging chads" controversy

A 2007 investigative report by Dan Rather
Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...

 charged Sequoia with deliberately supplying poor quality punch-card ballots to Palm Beach County, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 for the 2000 election
United States presidential election, 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President....

. According to former Sequoia employees, the ballots for Palm Beach County were produced with paper and manufacturing processes that were outside of normal specifications. This supposedly caused all of the problems with "hanging chads
Chad (paper)
Chad refers to paper fragments created when holes are made in a paper, card or similar synthetic materials, typically computer punched tape or punched cards. Sometimes chad has been used as a mass noun or as a countable noun, and the plural is commonly either "chad" or "chads"...

". When quality problems were found, Sequoia management ordered the production workers to ignore them. One worker speculated that the object was to discredit punch-card ballots and thus promote sales of electronic voting machines.

Florida touch-screen replacement

After the 2000 election problems, Florida required its counties to replace punch-card voting systems with touch-screen systems, some of which were purchased from Sequoia. However, there were some major problems with touch-screen systems, and in 2007 Florida ordered the counties to replace them with optical-scan systems by 1 July 2008. Sequoia offered to buy back its machines for $1 each. This offer was rejected.

Threat of legal action against Professor Edward Felten

In early 2008, New Jersey election officials announced that they planned to send one or more Sequoia Advantage voting machines to Professors Edward Felten
Edward Felten
Edward William Felten is a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. On November 4, 2010 he was named the Chief Technologist for the United States Federal Trade Commission, a position he officially assumed January 3, 2011.Felten has done a variety of computer...

 and Andrew Appel
Andrew Appel
Andrew Wilson Appel is the Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University, New Jersey. He is especially well-known because of his compiler books, the Modern Compiler Implementation in ML series, as well as Compiling With Continuations...

 of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 for analysis. Felten and Appel are computer scientists
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 interested in security issues, especially in regard to electronic voting systems. In March 2008, Sequoia sent an e-mail to Professor Felten asserting that allowing him to examine Sequoia voting machines would violate the license agreement between Sequoia and the county which bought them, and also that Sequoia would take legal action "to stop... non-compliant analysis... publication of Sequoia software... or any other infringement of our intellectual property."

This action sparked outrage among computer technology activists. Author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...

 commented "It's hard to imagine a stupider legal threat."

Shortly after this, Sequoia's corporate Web site was hacked. Ironically, the hack was first discovered by Ed Felten. Sequoia took its Web site down on 20 March and removed the "intrusive content".

The Avante Lawsuit

On June 2006, Sequoia Voting Systems, along with Diebold
Diebold
Diebold, Inc. is a United States-based security systems corporation that is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems , electronic and physical security products , and software and integrated systems for global financial and...

 and ES&S, were sued
Patent troll
Patent troll is a pejorative but questioned term used for a person or company who is a non-practicing inventor, and buys and enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered by the target or observers as unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to...

 by a small, virtually unknown New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 technology company called 'Avante', alleging infringement
Patent infringement
Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may vary by jurisdiction, but it typically includes using or...

 of two of its patents covering DREs (Direct Recording Electronic voting machines) and Optical Scanners. The lawsuit demands that the three companies a) are prohibited permanently to sell all their “infringing” equipment; b) recall all “infringing” equipment; c) destroy or deliver to Avante the “infringing” equipment; and d) award “infringement” damages to Avante including treble damages for "willful infringement". Sequoia Voting Systems, in particular, was sued for its Edge, Advantage, 400C, VeriVote Printer (VVPAT) and Insight machines (that is, for all of its products except one). The other two companies were sued for almost all of their products.

Smartmatic's continuing interests in Sequoia

In April 2008, competitor Hart InterCivic
Hart InterCivic
Hart InterCivic Inc. is a privately held United States company that provides elections, and print solutions to jurisdictions nationwide. While headquartered in Austin, Texas, Hart products are used by hundereds of jurisdictions nationwide....

 attempted a hostile takeover of Sequoia. Court documents unearthed at this time revealed that Smartmatic still retained some financial control over several aspects of Sequoia. At the time, Smartmatic held a $2 million note from SVS Holdings, Inc., the management team which purchased the company from Smartmatic. In accordance to the acquisition contract, Smartmatic also retains ownership of intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...

 rights for some of Sequoia's currently deployed election products in the United States, and holds the right to negotiate overseas non-compete agreements.

The CEO and President of Sequoia and SVS Holdings is Jack Blaine, a former Smartmatic executive. During a conference call with company employees, Blaine admitted that SVS/Sequoia did not control the intellectual property of some of its novel products, which belongs to Smartmatic.
These arrangements were purportedly agreed upon under the scrutiny and approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an inter-agency committee of the United States Government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in U.S. companies or operations. Chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, CFIUS includes representatives...

 (CFIUS) of the U.S. Treasury Department
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...

, which had been investigating whether there were any ties between Sequoia, Smartmatic, and the government of Venezuela. CFIUS dropped the investigation when Smartmatic agreed to divest Sequoia, in a deal whereby all of Sequoia's shares were sold off to SVS Holdings for an undisclosed price.

Among other bidders, Smartmatic and Sequoia were competitors for the contract to provide voting machines and services to the 2010 national elections
Philippine general election, 2010
Elections for all positions in the Philippines above the barangay were held on Monday, May 10, 2010. The elected president will become the 15th President of the Philippines, succeeding President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is barred from seeking re-election due to term restrictions...

 in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, one of the largest contracts ever in the voting technology industry. In the bidding process Sequoia was disqualified early, while Smartmatic was declared the winner.

Sale to Dominion and further security issues

On June 4th, 2010 Dominion, a previously little-known company engaged in Internet voting and manufacturing of optical scanners, acquired Sequoia Voting Systems. Truth-out.org has reported that two academic computer security experts hacked an AVC Edge Sequoia/Dominion electronic voting machine in the months before the 2010 congressional election. The voting program was replaced with a Pac-Man game. The machine was opened with a screwdriver without breaking any of the "tamper-evident" seals. The AVC Edge is used in precincts with 9 million registered voters.

See also

  • 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, voting machines.
  • Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004
    Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004
    The Venezuelan recall referendum of 15 August 2004 was a referendum to determine whether Hugo Chávez, the current President of Venezuela, should be recalled from office...


External links

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