The company said it will publically release the code for their new Frontier Election System in November.

“I think Sequoia is recognizing that it won’t do anymore to just urge people to trust them,” said Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, “and that people want to know that the code that controls these machines is open and that experts have had a full chance to look at it.”

Sequoia, like most other voting companies, has been reluctant to reveal to the public exactly how their machines work. From the Wired article:

The company has long had a reputation for vigorously fighting any efforts by academics, voting activists and others to examine the source code in its proprietary systems, and even threatened to sue Princeton University computer scientists if they disclosed anything learned from a court-ordered review of its software.

However, pressure has been mounting on the secretive company after allegations of voting irregularities, and the introduction of a competing, open source solution by the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.

If anything is open source and fully transparent to the public, shouldn’t it be our voting machines?

Duke University and the University of Michigan performed a joint study showing that the testosterone levels of male John McCain and Bob Barr supporters plummeted after the results of the 2008 election.

Females and Obama supporters did not show a change in hormone levels.

"This is a pretty powerful result," said Duke neuroscientist Kevin LaBar. "Voters are physiologically affected by having their candidate win or lose an election."

The tests were performed on 183 college-aged men and women on election night. They each chewed a piece of gum and spit it into a sample tube when the polls closed. They provided a second sample after the results came in, and then two more in 40 minute span. The spit was later tested for hormone levels.

"Voters participate in elections both directly by casting their ballots, and vicariously because they don’t personally win or lose the election," said researcher Steven Stanton. "This makes democratic political elections highly unique dominance contests."

Did the guys wimp out because Obama won, or because they realized that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be on television as much anymore? I’ll let you be the judge.