E-Voting Machines have "Private", not Federal Certification

[the ether]

E-Voting Machines have "Private", not Federal Certification



Please read this article and I'd also like your postition on going to a strictly all paper, hand counted voting solution.

There are many effective all paper, hand counted solutions that are used in many countries and many counties in the US.

This seem the most effective way to vote and count the votes.

What do you think?



Btw, I think you should send this article to your local county official, so they know that their machines are "tested" without Federal oversight.




Lax controls over e-voting testing labs

ELECTION OFFICIALS RELY ON PRIVATE FIRMS

By Elise Ackerman

Mercury News

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley had a simple question: Had a new electronic voting machine been approved by an independent testing lab?

State law requires such approval before the device could be used by California voters. It guaranteed the machines counted votes accurately and would work reliably during an election. As the state's top election official, Shelley figured he could get a quick answer.

He figured wrong.

Wyle Laboratories of El Segundo refused to discuss the status of its testing of the AccuVote-TSx machine made by its client, Diebold Election Systems. The information was proprietary, Wyle said, and could be revealed only to Diebold.

And so the secretary of state was introduced to the looking-glass world of voting-machine regulation. Over the years, repeated references to ``federal testing'' by election officials have given the impression that the government oversees the certification of touch-screen voting systems. While there are guidelines for the machines, no federal agency has legal authority to enforce them.

Instead, state officials rely on what amounts to a privately operated testing system -- a small group of for-profit companies overseen by a private elections group to ensure the integrity of elections increasingly dependent on electronic voting machines.

No official oversight

Neither the testing procedures nor the testing results are considered to be public information, and these testing laboratories have not traditionally been subject to direct oversight by election officials. For years, the testing system was managed by a private center that also accepted donations from voting-equipment manufacturers.

``I was shocked,'' Shelley recalled. ``Everyone seemed to be in bed with everyone else. You had these so-called independent testing authorities floating out there in an undefined pseudo-public, pseudo-private status whose source of income is the vendors themselves.''

Recent testing by states and university scientists has shown that these labs, called independent testing authorities, or ITAs, are signing off on some software with serious flaws.

Last year, a team led by a Johns Hopkins University computer scientist found ``significant and wide-reaching security vulnerabilities'' in a Diebold system that could have allowed vote tampering.

Subsequent investigations by the states of Ohio and Maryland raised similar security concerns about equipment sold by Diebold and other voting-machine makers.

``We can't trust the ITA process,'' said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a technical adviser to the California secretary of state. ``The record shows that these systems have gotten through the ITA testing with embarrassing security vulnerabilities in them.''

National standards

Forty-two states, including California, rely on three independent testing labs to safeguard elections. By holding voting-equipment manufacturers accountable to national standards and keeping copies of software programs in escrow, the independent labs are supposed to help stop defective computer code from reaching the polling place.

But critics contend that the labs are too close to the elections industry to serve as effective watchdogs. ``The only thing they are independent from is state and federal regulators,'' Shelley told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission this month.

Dan Reeder, a spokesman for Wyle, which functioned as the nation's sole testing lab from 1994 to 1997, said the company's policy is to provide information to the manufacturers who are its customers.

``We would not even acknowledge who we have done business with because of the proprietary nature of the relationship,'' Reeder said. ``It's much like a lawyer-client relationship.''

Until last fall, equipment makers routinely informed the National Association of State Election Directors when the testers' approved their voting systems.

The association, which served as a clearinghouse for information for election professionals, posted a list of approved equipment on its Web site. The group also was supposed to keep the companies honest by verifying approval of their voting systems with the testing labs.

Weaknesses in the testing system came to light last year, when a state audit revealed that Diebold released voting software to three California counties before it had been reviewed by testing laboratories. That led to a broader inquiry of Diebold by Shelley, who ultimately banned some of the company's machines from use in four counties because it lied about their testing status.

Only two independent labs test voting software: CIBER of Greenwood Village, Colo., and SysTest Labs of Denver. And only one, Wyle, tests the physical machinery.

SysTest Labs President Brian Phillips said the security risks identified by the outside scientists were not covered by standards published by the Federal Election Commission. ``So long as a system does not violate the requirements of the standards, it is OK,'' Phillips said.

Standards updated

The FEC standards that SysTest has been using date back to the late 1980s, Phillips said, when $300,000 was allocated to study the security and reliability of the first generation of electronic voting machines. But after the voting system standards went into effect in 1990, the federal government failed to provide money for their implementation. The standards were not updated again until last year.

CIBER declined repeated interview requests.

The private testing system of independent labs was created in 1994 by a group of election officials who were brought together by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED). But the association lacked the resources to accredit testing laboratories and track equipment approvals. The Election Center, a private training organization for election officials, offered to take on those tasks for free.

In 2002, the Houston-based Election Center operated on a $462,000 budget. Executive Director Doug Lewis said Election Center's budget comes mostly from membership dues and training fees.

But he acknowledges accepting up to $10,000 a year in donations from voting-equipment manufacturers like Sequoia Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software.

That doesn't sit well with California's top election official. ``Where I come from, any firm regulatory or approval scheme should be conducted by entities that are entirely independent from any reliance -- financial or otherwise -- from the people that they have to oversee,'' Shelley said.

Lewis defended the donations. ``I don't have a problem with it because neither the Election Center or NASED ever had the right to approve or disapprove a voting system,'' he said.

Though the Election Center couldn't force manufacturers to send their equipment to testing labs, many states require the labs' approval before the machines can be used in an election. Today, only a handful of states conduct their own examination of a voting system's hardware and software.

Despite its central role in guaranteeing the integrity of elections, the private testing system of independent labs is only loosely monitored. Neither the National Association of State Election Directors nor the Election Center has the resources to conduct follow-up inspection visits after a lab is accredited, Lewis said. The election directors' association also does not review contracts between the testers and manufacturers.

Donations to GOP

According to FEC records, CIBER donated $48,000 to Republicans during the past four years, including $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000, when CIBER was the only company testing voting software in the country. The company made no donations to Democrats.

Said Shelley, a Democrat: ``I think it compromises the integrity of the process if you have the testing entities give contributions to one party or another. It's not appropriate.''

The Election Center ended its involvement with the independent labs last year. An attempt to transfer the responsibility to a new federal election agency was thwarted after the agency's creation was delayed and Congress did not provide enough funding for an oversight program. Currently, no one appears to be closely watching the labs.

While the testing system remains in limbo, Shelley has requested that voting-equipment makers turn over a copy of their computer code. For the first time, California will be conducting its own line-by-line code review and security analysis.

``Even if the testing labs approve something, if we don't approve it, we won't run with it,'' Shelley said.



http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/8797832.htm?1c

[rfranklin]

1. My county has some fly-by-night, working out of a garage company....

to test their voting machines. Check it out!

Morris County, New Jersey: Drug deals, vested interests, and outsourcing to private trucking companies

— By Brian L., a private citizen in New Jersey, and a member of BlackBoxVoting.org

"I am a private citizen who became concerned about the voting process after the 2000 election fiasco in Florida. I recently began learning all I can about the actual voting process in Morris County, New Jersey. I have spoken with county officials from various offices and levels of county government in an effort to identify the specific vulnerabilities of our touch screen voting machines. I am startled by what I have learned.

(more: http://www.blackboxvoting.org )

"Morris County has 805 Sequoia Pacific brand AVC Advantage voting machines...In Morris County, every official I spoke with indicated that the county has no direct contact or dealings with technicians from Sequoia Pacific, the company that manufactures these machines.

If Sequoia Pacific doesn’t maintain our voting machines, who does?

"According to Richard Drake, who is in charge of Morris County’s voting machine warehouse, a private company called Election Graphics is contracted to print and install a ballot face sheet on each of the voting machines and to test and prepare each machine for an election. These technicians from Election Graphics run logic and accuracy tests on each voting machine and “certify” that the machines are ready for use before an the election. After the ballots have been programmed into the machines, but before the election, the company’s technicians have full access to the voting machines at the warehouse as they prepare and test these machines. Mr. Drake was not sure if the testing and certification process preformed by Election Graphics is open to the public.

"Giving private vendors total access to our voting machine before an election creates potentially huge security problems. To be certain of the facts, I called the County Clerks Office and confirmed that Morris County does have a contract with Election Graphics to print the ballots and prepare the machines for our elections. So, what do we know about this company that prepares our voting machine? Not very much!

"Election Graphics is a privately owned company located at 9242 JFK Blvd., North Bergen, New Jersey. There is very little public information available about it on the Internet...I located the address and discovered that the company’s office is located in a rundown commercial building on the outskirts of the town. There is a payphone on the corner of the building right next to the doorway. Two young men were standing at the payphone negotiating a drug deal as I stood at the entrance to Election Graphics.

"The company name was on the door in faded letters, but the office was shuttered and vacant. A sign taped inside the window directed FedEx and other deliverymen to deliver all future packages for Election Graphics to the garage door behind the building, on 2nd Street. The sign instructed deliverymen to knock on the garage door, “and someone will take the packages."

"I walked past the drug dealers and went down 2nd Street to a brick, detached garage behind the building. It had a folding metal garage door. There were no signs identifying the business and no windows or public entranceways. The alleyway to the right was closed off with chain link fencing and a gate. Behind the gate was a wooden wall to hide the view of the alleyway and a barking dog to discourage any intruders. Along the left side of the garage was another narrow alleyway with no access into the garage.

"The next day I called Election Graphics and asked to speak to the person in charge. I said I wanted to report that drug deals were taking place in front of the building, which was true, of course. A perky sounding female receptionist answered the pone, but I heard other receptions in the background. I was speaking to an answering service. I was told that the President of the company was Adam L. Perna, who wasn’t available at that time.

"A Yahoo search of “Adam Perna + election” turned up a complaint filed against the Morris County Republican Committee by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission for failing to report thousands of dollars worth of political contributions in a timely fashion. Among the donations listed were a $1,500 donation from Adam L. Perna and his wife and a $1,500 donation from - Election Graphics Inc. Further checking revealed that Mr. Perna gives generously to other Republicans, except in heavily Democratic Camden County where he gives to the Democratic Party. In 2001 and 2002 Mr. Perna and Election Graphics gave $7000 to the Morris County Republican Party.

"So it appears that Morris County has hired a political partisan, operating a printing press out of a private garage in Hudson County, to prepare and certify our electronic voting machines before an election. And what is his background, education and training to provide these technical services?

"Fisher O’Kacy Trucking: An official in the Morris County Clerk’s Office also said that the county has a contract with a trucking firm to deliver the voting machines to the polling places prior to the elections. She named Fisher O’Kacy NJ, Inc., of 607 Myrtle Ave., Boonton, New Jersey as the company that transports the electronic voting machines to and from the polling places. This 550 Myrtle Avenue address actually belongs to an A&P food store. An employee at the A&P confirmed by phone that the trucking company called Fisher-O’Hara is located down the street from them.

"This confusion highlights the point that having a private contractor deliver these voting machines to polling places creates another potential risk point for tampering with these machines. Full public disclosure of all vendors who service our election process should be required. Background checks on all employees who work for these vendors should also be required.

"Is Election Graphics a legitimate choice to provide technical support for our voting machines? To be clear, I am not saying that anything illegal has taken place. I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Perna is anything other than a frugal and practical businessman. New Jersey is, after all, a "pay-to-play" state. It is neither illegal nor an ethics violation for local governments to expect political contributions before granting government contracts. Yet, even in a pay-to-play state, the idea of political contributors roaming freely among our voting machines seems crazy.

"It seems that there is a long history of characters and businesses associated with Sequoia voting machines. For example, Independent Voting Machines Services of Moorestown, NJ, has a business association with Sequoia and supplies parts, voting machines and technical support to a number of states, including Florida during the 2000 election. The President of the company, Pasquale “Rocco” Ricci pleaded guilty in 2001 to charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. It was part of a bribery scheme that went on for many years, which lined the pockets of Jerry Fowler, the former Louisiana Commissioner of Elections. (More details in Chapter 8 of Black Box Voting and in the April 2004 issue of Vanity Fair.)

"...When the Help America Vote Act stampeded states and municipalities into purchasing these electronic voting machines, the manufacturers never leveled with county voting officials about the risks and vulnerabilities of these machines. As a result, election boards all over the United States have not established appropriate security procedures to mitigate the significant risks for errors or vote tampering. Municipalities all around the country need to beef up their voting procedures before the next election."

----------------

[TexasProgresive]

2. I vote for Canadian style voting

All paper - hand marked- with obsevers from each party and hand counted in record time. If I remember correctly, in the 2000 federal elections Canada had complete results some 4 hours after the west coast polls closed. These machines must never be used again.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I live in a backwater rural area, so have always had paper

and thank heavens for that!

[dusty64]

4. This whole issue is hard

to believe. The complete corruptness and incompetence is mindboggling. So many worked so hard and often died to ensure our right to vote and to see it thrown away so easily with barely a peep (this forum and a few others being the obvious exception).

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Reads like our banana republic is going high tech!

Not even Jimmy Carter can't help us with this one.

[RedEagle]

6. Take Back Your Vote

Create a citizens' advisory council, non-partisan, at the local level where decisions are made to buy these infernal machines.

You have every right to do so. It's your money, your voting system.

Your input should be paramount to the decisions made.

For example, what functions of the new voter registration systems will be used? Will you do away with signing in on paper poll books at the polls? Will you concede to all electronic voter registration?

It's all on it's way to a county near you, due to HAVA.

Nothing in HAVA mandates that you use those features of the new systems. But if the system is capable, they are going to go there.

You can stop it. But you must get involved.

If you don't, we'll just keep following Florida into the quagmire.

Florida's voting expert guru, Paul Craft, wants voter registration to become all electronic.

(And that is someone else, long associated with The Election Center and NASED's Voting Systems Board, that has to go)

[the ether]

7. take back the vote and bake the machines

"Create a citizens' advisory council, non-partisan, at the local level where decisions are made to buy these infernal machines."





Been thinking about such a thing. I think that this is the next step.