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 1 of 3 page(s)

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For almost a decade Ciber Inc., was one of three Independent Test Authority (ITA) labs that were authorized to hire themselves out to voting machine manufacturers for inspecting and testing their voting machines to federal standards. The testing was a crucial part of the process that led to ultimate qualification of those machines for use by the voters. Ciber, along with SysTest and Wyle Labs, held a very lucrative position in what has become the boondoggle of certifying voting systems. They receive test procedures written by the vendors and a hefty check from those same vendors and, apparently in Ciber's case, they don't do the paperwork or testing required before passing the voting systems on to the voters to use.

The New York Times recently reported that Ciber has been temporarily barred from doing any testing under the Election Assistance Commission's (EAC) interim testing and certification program. This action was taken against Ciber after the EAC found that it was not following its own quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.

The Times article also pointed out that Ciber is under fire from analysts hired by New York State over its plans to test new voting machines for the state. This was initially reported last October by Howard Stanislevic for VoteTrustUSA.

In his article Mr. Stanislevic points out:
NYSTEC, a not for profit spin-off from the US Air Force's Research Laboratory at Rome, NY, was hired by the State Board of Elections to conduct an independent review of the voting system test plans issued by one of the three so-called Independent Testing Authorities that test voting systems on behalf their manufacturers, CIBER, Inc., previously hired by the state.

NYSTEC's report is highly critical of CIBER, stating that the ITA's test plan for the state's new voting systems lacked numerous security and functional testing requirements of the 2006 NY State Election Law, the EAC's 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Vols. 1 & 2, and NY State's Voting System Standards.

According to the NYSTEC report, some of the items omitted from the ITA's test plans were:
- a requirement for voting systems to not include any device or functionality potentially capable of externally transmitting or receiving data via the Internet, radio waves or other wireless means;

- a requirement for the voting system software not to contain any 'viruses', 'worms', 'time bombs', and 'drop dead' devices that may cause the voting system to cease functioning properly at a future time;

- a requirement for voting systems to provide a means by which ballot definition code may be positively verified to ensure that it corresponds to the format of the ballot face and the election configuration.

Furthermore, CIBER's Security Master Test Plan did not specify any test methods or procedures for the majority of requirements. CIBER has stated that these will be provided in another phase of the project.

The day of the New York Times article officials in New York showed they have some integrity (something that appears to be missing from the EAC) by announcing that they may now suspend all state testing of voting systems. The article reporting the announcement relates:

Officials at the federal Election Assistance Commission delayed accrediting Ciber in July, after detecting problems in Ciber's quality-control procedures. The company has long been criticized by voting watchdog groups, but some state elections officials said on Thursday that they only learned of the federal commission's decision after details of it were published Thursday in The New York Times.

"If we had known that, and if we had seen the report from them, we would have known why they were decertified, and maybe we wouldn't have hired them to begin with, or maybe we would have made some remedial changes," said Lee Daghlian, a spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections.

Mr. Daghlian said the board had requested a copy of a report prepared by the federal commission and would review it before making a final decision.

"It may not delay use of the new machines," he said. "If this report comes in and it's something really bad that we didn't know about, we may have to start all over again."

The action, or inaction, by the EAC leaves us with a lot of questions. Why did the EAC not tell us - the voters, the taxpayers, their bosses - that they had questions about one of the labs that certifies voting systems? I think we all would have liked to know about that. Though the document, "Interim Accreditation Program", inconspicuously posted on the EAC's website and dated August 2006, lists only the two ITAs that are presently accredited, Wyle and SysTest Labs, the EAC has done nothing else to inform either state election officials or us - the ones who pay for the accreditation process - of Ciber's failure to comply with the required testing procedures.

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