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?

No. At least, we have no evidence to support that. However, Glenn Beck IS trying to kill the parody website DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com.

The domain was registered by Isaac Eiland-Hall of Panama, Fla. on Sept. 1 of this year. The site offers dubious “evidence” that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990.

A mere three days later, on Sept. 4, Beck filed a complaint with the Word Intellectual Property Organization (PDF), requesting that the domain name be taken from Eiland-Hall.

Eiland-Hall’s lawyer, Marc J. Randazza, responded with a gloriously sarcastic legal brief (PDF). No seriously, read it, it’s likely the most entertaining legal document you will ever lay eyes upon. Here’s an excerpt:

Beck has tried to paint himself as a “babe in the woods” who has fallen
victim to a vicious character attack.  In reality, Beck is an accomplished
and deliberate manipulator of public opinion, and it is absurd to suggest
that   he   himself   does   not   understand   the   nature   and   function   of
Respondent’s  website.  Given  his  long  history  of  using  the  Gottfried
Technique,  Beck  must  have  recognized  that  the  respondent  has  merely
presented Mr. Beck with a mirror.  If Beck does not like what he sees, the
Respondent is not to blame.

The joke, borrowed from Gilbert Gottfried’s hillarious roasting of Bob Saget, originated from a post on Fark.com, thus the aforementioned “Gottfried Effect.” The joke became an instant meme, most notably on social news site reddit.com.

Beck himself is no stranger to making outrageous claims, such as calling President Obama a racist. He has even compared himself to Howard Beale, the crazed newsman in 1976’s classic satire, “Network.”

There are a couple of curious things about this case. The first is why Beck is attacking the site internationally, instead of inside the United States. Scientific journalist Ed Brayton offers a likely explanation.

“Because he knows he would lose a libel suit,” said Brayton in an Oct. 5 post. “He is a public figure and the site is clearly satirical. Under precedents like Falwell v Flynt, it is virtually impossible to win such a suit.”

The second is Beck’s silence on the vicious rumor that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. Odd behavior for such an outspoken man.