Washington state suit wants vote machines opened 
By Reed Stevenson    Reuters
 
SEATTLE, April 12 ? An electronic voting machine maker is battling a voter rights advocate in Washington state who wants to force the company to reveal the machines' software blueprint.

Paul Lehto, an Everett, Washington, lawyer has filed suit against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., a privately held company based in Oakland, California, and Snohomish County, where his practice is located, arguing Sequoia's contract should be voided.
       The lawsuit, filed last week in King County Superior Court, pits the right of a company to guard proprietary information against the public's need to know how elections are tabulated, Lehto said.
       ''These are entities that are providing the most central governmental function that we have, the counting of the vote,'' Lehto said Tuesday. ''If they are not only controlling that process but purporting to own it, then that is a serious problem.''
       Lehto said he began to question the reliability of Snohomish County's voting system during Washington state's 2004 governor's race, which initially gave Republican Dino Rossi a lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire.
       That outcome was reversed after several recounts, putting Gregoire into the governor's seat vacated by Democrat Gary Locke.
       Snohomish County auditor Bob Terwilliger said that there were no issues with the Sequoia touch-screen systems that the county used last year.
       ''We have had no reason to be concerned,'' Terwilliger said, adding that the county had been using the machines since 2002.
       Out of 352,000 registered voters in Snohomish County, 200,000 voted by mail and 96,200 voted in polling locations using Sequoia's electronic voting machines.
       Alfie Charles, a spokesman for Sequoia, said the underlying code, or software blueprint, for the company's voting machines was not disclosed because it is considered a trade secret and its release could compromise security.
       ''Electronic voting (machines) performed extremely well. ... They provided certainty in ballot results in places where they haven't had it in the past,'' Charles said.
       Charles and Terwilliger said that they had not yet been served with the lawsuit.