January 6, 2007 at 18:57:10

Testing Lab Failure Leads To Obfuscation By The Election Assistance Commission

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By JGideon (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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The Associated Press quoted EAC Chairwoman Donnetta Davidson's response:
Davidson cautioned that federal testing of voting machines by labs like Ciber is just "one of three prongs" since most states and counties also conduct their own tests.

"There are a number of layers of testing," Davidson said. "I think it's very important voters do realize how secure the process is."

Ms. Davidson's comments demonstrate the disregard for facts that seems to be more and more typical of the EAC commissioners. Ms. Davidson came to the EAC from a position as Secretary of State of Colorado. She knows full well that most states rely on the national qualification process as the first and most important step to ensure that the voting systems they purchase are capable of doing the job they were built to do. The federal testing is not "one of three prongs". It is not a co-equal process with state and county testing. It is, instead, the first step required by law in most states. Those states cannot even examine new voting systems until they have assurance from the ITA that the systems meet federal standards. Most of those states do not look at the code. Instead they rely on the ITA process to ensure that source code, firmware, and hardware all meet federal standards.

In a later reported interview with reporters from the Denver Post, Ms. Davidson showed, again, that she is not concerned about the lack of integrity of the companies involved in building, testing, or marketing voting systems. Ms. Davidson contradicts the very actions of her own government agency and repeats excuses given in interviews by Ciber representatives in attempts to defend their actions.

Testers in Ciber's Alabama office didn't adequately document their work, according to officials with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

But the same federal officials said Ciber's problems are not about shoddy work but about shifting government standards for voting-machine testing.

"I think they kept good documentation; we're just requiring more," said U.S. Election Assistance Commission chairwoman Donetta Davidson, former Colorado secretary of state.

Meanwhile EAC Commissioner Gracia Hillman has also joined in the quest to diffuse this situation and to cover for Ciber. Part of the ITA Accreditation process is for an on-site inspection by a representative of the EAC. There are unconfirmed reports that this visit was accomplished last summer and that the resulting report and Ciber's response to that report are what has held up Ciber's accreditation. Yet, The Journal News (NY) reports the following:

New York officials said they read in a published report that the Election Assistance Commission has known since last summer that there were inadequacies with the way Ciber Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., was performing tests on machines and documenting results.

"At the present time, until we get that report in our hands and have a chance to review it, I can't comment myself that we are fully comfortable that all of those issues have been addressed," said Peter Kosinski, co-executive director of the state Board of Elections.

But Commissioner Gracia Hillman of the Election Assistance Commission said Thursday there is no such report.

No such report? If there is no report on the testing procedures used by Ciber, on what basis did the EAC refuse to accredit them?

And what of the voting systems that Ciber was supposed to test but either failed to properly test or failed to properly document their testing? Is the EAC going to question the certification of those systems? Will those systems be retested by another lab that will do the job they are paid to do? The answer is "No". According to Jeannie Layson, spokeswoman for the EAC, "The EAC cannot decertify a system that was qualified by NASED. To obtain an EAC certification, a manufacturer must submit its system for testing under our program."

Ms. Layson's statement is not backed-up by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). Section 202 of HAVA gives the EAC the power to decertify voting systems. And, Section 231 tells the EAC that they must have an accreditation and certification program within six months of the establishment of voting systems standards. In the interim period voting system certification, decertification and recertification can be done by another entity. In this case the National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED) has been doing that job.

And what of NASED and the job they did? A large part of the certification process was done by the NASED Technical Board chaired by Sandy Steinbach of the Iowa Secretary of State's Office with members Steve Freeman, Paul Craft and Brit Williams. (More on this group can be found here, here and here)

Why did this group, whose responsibility it was to review the documents supplied by the ITAs, fail to recognize that Ciber was not following its own quality control program and not documenting all of its tests? Either they ignored the omissions or never looked for them. The omissions seem to have been apparent enough to the New York state analysts and even to the EAC. Why were they not apparent to four people who were appointed to a board whose purpose was to specifically look for those problems?

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