New York to Grill Voting Machine Testing Lab

[Wilms]

New York to Grill Voting Machine Testing Lab

Friday, May 04, 2007

by Kim Zetter

Vote_2 Congress is holding a special field hearing in New York on Monday to discuss problems the state has had in switching to new e-voting machines. But that's less interesting than the fact that testifying at the hearing will be Mac Slingerland, president & CEO of CIBER. CIBER is the lab that has been responsible for testing and certifying the majority of voting machines in the country. The lab, however, lost its accreditation last summer after federal officials newly tasked with overseeing voting machine testing labs discovered that CIBER had a long-standing problem with quality-assurance procedures and documentation of tests performed on machines. Strangely, the federal Election Assistance Commission that evaluated CIBER kept the news about CIBER's problems quiet from the public and from election officials purchasing machines. EAC's report on CIBER's problems became public only when the New York Times disclosed it (registration required) in January.

snip

This is just one problem with the testing, however. I chronicled many other problems with the testing and certification of voting machines in this 2004 story.

BTW, here's the EAC's latest letter to CIBER detailing what the lab still needs to do to satisfy the commission.

The hearing in New York will be held Monday, May 7th at 9:30 am at the city council chambers in New York's city hall by the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives. EAC chairwoman Donetta L. Davidson will also be testifying -- conceivably about why the committee withheld its report on CIBER for so long.

snip

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/new_york_to_gri.html

[Bill Bored]

1. The immovable object meets the irresistible force! nt

[aquart]

2. Do not mess with my levers. I love my levers.

[Stevepol]

3. K&R!

[garybeck]

4. question about current NY vote counting and tabulation

can someone tell me how NY votes are tabulated?

I got into a discussion with someone from NY and he told me NY is fine because they still use the levers, which I know is true, at least until now... but who can tell me, very briefly what happens after you pull the lever? save yourself the time and send me a link if you have one. I just need the basics and I'm familiar with most of the technologies so a couple sentences would probably cover it. thanks.

[Bill Bored]

5. As with most voting systems, after the vote is cast, it's either counted, or it's not.

If it's not, you see excessive undervotes, which we don't, so the incidence of not counting is quite rare -- less than 1% at the top of the ticket, and some of that may be intentional undervoting.

After that, bi-partisan poll workers write down the totals from each machine on paper at the end of the night. (I'm sure they have to sign off on them.) The machines are sent to a warehouse and the totals are reported to election central and manually entered into a spreadsheet program of some kind. I don't know what it is, but it's not GEMS or anything like that.

Then, about a week after the election, the totals are checked again on every machine in the warehouse by bi-partisan teams which include representatives of the candidates. (They also get to check the machines BEFORE the elections, which is like auditing ballot definition programming, except that it's just a printed ballot attached to the front of the machines -- not software.) If there are totals that don't match the ones from election night, and this can't be explained by human error such as transposed numbers, etc. (which should be very rare), then it's up to the election lawyers to figure out what to do next.

There are locks on the machines but I can't tell you how good they are.

Why do you ask?

[Bill Bored]

6. Some Stuff About the Hearing

<http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2434&Itemid=26>