The people who should check out the machine are the people who wrote the above paper. (here is a link to the PDF: http://coblitz.codeen.org/citp.princeton.edu/voting/advantage/advantage-insecurities-redacted.pdf )

Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the
Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H
DRE Voting Machine
October 17, 2008

Andrew W. Appel∗
Princeton University

Maia Ginsburg
Princeton University

Harri Hursti

Brian W. Kernighan
Princeton University

Christopher D. Richards
Princeton University

Gang Tan
Lehigh University

Video: http://citpsite.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/oldsite-htdocs/voting/advantage/video.html

"What you need to know:
The AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrong. It's easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party's candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right. It's easy to make this program take care to cheat only on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic "audit trail" in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it's extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program."

Don, Please, please, please get a life.

Ask for the recount Joe!

"Human error" found in Fairfield election results
Published: Thursday, July 07, 2011, 9:03 PM
http://www.nj.com/cumberland/index.ssf/2011/07/human_error_cited_in_fairfield.html
By Greg Adomaitis

"FAIRFIELD TWP. — A supposed malfunction of the problematic and much-debated Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines is being chalked up to human error.

Results from Primary Election day last month puzzled two candidates who expected the exact opposite. Less than a month later, there’s a line in the sand being drawn between a second election and inspection of the voting machine itself.

“On Election Day, the votes cast for Candidates Vivian and Mark Henry registered for Candidates Cynthia and Ernest Zirkle, respectively,” read a statement addressed to all affected by the Democratic County Committee election in Fairfield....." story continued at above URL

This kind of "human error" problem isn't unusual here in NJ since the AVC machines were installed..... a search will find others.. This particular election may have been honest.. But it may not have been. Is there a way to know for sure? From what I can tell, I don't think so. But I'm not an expert.

http://coblitz.codeen.org/citp.princeton.edu/voting/advantage/advantage-insecurities-redacted.pdf
There is some recent data ( Gusciora et al. v. McGreevey ) linked from here:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/nj-voting-case/

IMO, Don is making a valid point.

Frankly, we should not have computerized voting machines. It is not possible to make them properly secure.

If computerized voting machines must be used, a paper ballot should be printed and displayed to the voter after he/she enters the vote. After the voter confirms the printed entry matches what was entered on the screen, the paper ballot can be deposited into a locked and sealed container.

If there is ever a question as to the computerized results, the printouts can then be examined to determine the true vote count.

Steve, read this 2004 paper by Appel at Princeton Computer Science:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/nj-voting-case/AppelExpertReport.pdf
which in essence, explains to the state about the many problems with the Sequoia machines and DRE type machines generally BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN PURCHASED but they inexplicably and irresponsibly bought them anyway-
Quote: "In this report I will discuss direct-recording
electronic (DRE) voting machines without a voter-
verifiable paper trail, such as the machines that are to
be used in many New Jersey counties in 2004. I will
address primarily the question of, “can we be sure that
the votes as the voter cast them are accurately counted
using DRE machines?” ...
then..(talking about voting by the longtime paper ballot method-with observers)
"That we can still trust the fairness of the vote-counting
is remarkable; but this trust comes in part from specific
safeguards that are put into the process. One of the
most important safeguards is transparency: both the
public and the parties are invited to observe key parts
of the process.
6. As I will explain, when DRE voting machines are used,
that transparency is lost when a key step of the process—
recording the voter’s vote into an electronic “ballot box”—is done by software, out of sight of any observer (even of the voter himself)."

The paper is linked (see phase 1) and there's also recent news, at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/nj-voting-case/

I would be interested in seeing a count of absentee ballots bydistrict, aswe seein the final tallys. I'venever seen any differential published anywhere. Has anyone see those stats?

absentee ballot use probably can be statistically analyzed to reveal if there is any abnormal pattern.. "outliers" is the term for unusual patterns.. But, bear in mind that something like a neighbor group going on a trip for a weekcan trigger a bump in the numbers. I think cheating by voters is rare to nonexistent (ater all its a felony.. someone would have to be an idiot to do it..) OTOH I suspect voting machine fraud is common with the kind of machines NJ has been holding on to despite tons of evidence showing they need to be dumped.. Why keep them, they are practically worthless..

for example..
"How I bought used voting machines on the Internet"
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/avc/

Princeton, NJ, February 8, 2007. "Recently I bought some used AVC Advantage voting machines, made by Sequoia Voting Systems in 1997. I've been studying ..."

Also read this http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100824/11150310763.shtml

It looks like a worker might have been caught red handed hacking a machine..