I video-chatted yesterday with Princeton professor Edward Felten. After he was alerted to strange vote tallies by Sequoia voting machines on Super Tuesday, Sequoia wrote to tell Felton that if he investigated the malfunction, even at the request of county clerks, it may be grounds for a lawsuit against him.

Felten is a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton, where he is the founding Director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

He was the lead computer science expert witness for the Department of Justice in the Microsoft antitrust case, and he has testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on digital television technology and regulation, and, after uncovering that Diebold voting machines were “vulnerable to extremely serious attacks,” before the House Administration Committee on electronic voting. In 2004 he was named one of Scientific American magazine’s fifty worldwide science and technology leaders.

In our chat, Felten discusses what his ideal voting machine would look like, whether or not he agrees with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen that Internet voting isn’t yet a realistic idea, and the latest in the recent Sequoia saga in New Jersey. For those interested, we speak about Sequoia at the 4:23 mark.

Special thanks to Andy Sternberg for his help in setting up this interview.

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