I don't know if you've noticed lately, but our elected officials are being determined by people who can't do simple math or write a comprehensible sentence in English. And no, I don't mean people who voted for Rudy Guiliani. I'm talking about companies like Sequoia Voting Systems. Though it hasn't received huge media coverage, New Jersey's recent presidential primary had a number of electoral snafus. About 60 of I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but our elected officials are being determined by people who can’t do simple math or write a comprehensible sentence in English. And no, I don’t mean people who voted for Rudy Guiliani. I’m talking about companies like Sequoia Voting Systems.Though it hasn’t received huge media coverage, New Jersey’s recent presidential primary had a number of electoral snafus. About 60 of the state’s Sequoia voting machines recorded the wrong number of votes cast. In other words, if 200 people in a precinct voted, and the votes were split evenly between the Democrats and Republicans, the voting machines would show a tally of either 201 or 199 votes cast. (You’ll find evidence and an explanation of it here.)One vote here or there goes askew, no big deal, right? But it does raise the question what else the machines might have gotten wrong. And a reasonable person, concerned about the effect on our democratic process, might want to dig a little deeper into the question. That’s what New Jersey’s Union County officials thought when they asked Princeton researcher and e-voting wonk Ed Felten to take a look at the machines and figure out what went wrong. Felten has a long history of finding flaws in voting machines; in past years he has demonstrated how easily a Diebold machine could be hacked and made to display inaccurate voting totals. He also showed how the locked cabinet containing the Diebold machine’s memory cards could be accessed using a hotel mini-bar key. (You would of course be charged $7 for any votes added or removed.)But Felten never got the chance to fiddle with the Sequoia machines, because the company sicced its attorneys on him and the county. They not only declined to send the machines to Felten, they dropped the notion of investigating it entirely.Sequoia says any independent investigation would violate its trade secrets. (In related news, the Mafia would like you to know that investigating its loan sharking operations would also violate its trade secrets.) The company posted a tortured explanation about what may have gone wrong with the New Jersey machines, which too long to excerpt here but you can find the relevant bits on Felten’s Freedom to Tinker blog. The Sequoia response doesn’t address its machines math problems at all, but it does point out that a) these machines had basic UI and engineering problems that would earn your average electrical engineering student an F, and b) whoever wrote the explanation would also fail freshman composition. And yet these people are standing between us and the next president of the United States. What’s wrong with this picture?Angry hackers have responded by taking down portions of Sequoia’s Web site. An understandable response, but probably not an effective one.Felten, who not only understands this technology better than the companies making these boxes but also expresses himself quite well, draws this conclusion: The bottom line is clear. An investigation is needed — an independent investigation, done by someone not chosen by Sequoia, not paid by Sequoia, and not reporting to Sequoia. County clerks have called for an independent investigation as well. But I’m not holding my breath. When corporate interests collide with the public interest, our votes no longer seem to count.Got strong feelings about voting machines? Cast your thoughts below or email them to me. As always, top tipsters qualify for cool swag. Think you’ve got the right stuff to pass our tech quizzes? They’re not as easy as they look: • The InfoWorld News Quiz • Test Your Geek IQ • Test Your Network Security IQ Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business