Bay State News

Jim Bleck designed the first operational voting machine to integrate both hardware and software. 

For Sequoia Systems he built 100,000 voting machines starting in 1987. In 2006, his North Chelmsford-based design firm wrapped up work for voting machine customers. Sequoia was later sold to Dominion Voting Systems. 

In 1996, Bleck said he knew to get away from chads, but not all designers listened. In the 2000 election, that became an issue in Florida where George W. Bush beat Al Gore by only 587 votes. 

Bleck’s firm does general design and mostly works in the medical field now due to the election environment.

Sequoia Voting Systems’ voting machines have come into question for glitches in the past. Voting machine companies are largely unregulated and tend to have a secretive nature. 

Some are also questioning Dominion Voting Systems in Georgia’s election. Trump has been calling for votes to be recounted in the state after the Republican Party alleged votes were counted after polls closed. There were also glitches in Gwinnett County that caused votes to be delayed. 

In Michigan, Dominion has been challenged by Trump because of a glitch in Antrim County that caused 6,000 votes to go to Biden that were cast for Trump. That glitch was only uncovered because Antrim County is a deeply Republican County and the results at first said that Biden had won the county. 

Bleck said that he hopes what comes out of this election is that people understand the procedure and the security behind voting machines. He said you don’t want elections to look like mischief.

“I'm listening and waiting with bated breath for someone to come up with something,” Bleck said. “With this point, I think the best thing is, you know, the FEC stepped in and sets up some regulations that may give them right and do more than just turning machines off at the end of the election (and) turn them back on.”

Bleck said when he and people like him, as well as subcontractors and those who were managing Sequoia before it got sold, it was a clean operation.

“It was pretty serious,” Bleck said. “Then after it sold you know, we … kept in touch with some of them, but really the new people, they didn't have much use for what we were doing so I'm just saying, a lot of the people designed the original machines, the Advantage and that Edge to machines, they are just long gone.”

The computer voting machines Bleck and his employees at Bleck Design Group helped design in the 1980s were big news. In 1990, the systems were used in Chelmsford, Ma., with success.