Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson
Hours after our report last week on threatened subpoenas against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and its banned voting machine test laboratory, CIBER, Inc., by the New York State Board of Elections, the company supplied information concerning its lack of accreditation to New York officials. Enraged NY State Election Commissioner Doug Kellner called the secret reports “soiled laundry†that both the company and EAC had been trying to hide.
Friday, the EAC reacted to the disclosure by CIBER of confidential EAC documents by releasing the assessment reports upon which last summer’s decision for non-accreditation of CIBER was based. The documents, kept secret by the EAC for half a year, reveal a shocking level of incompetence and negligence by the “independent testing authority†(ITA) lab which tested electronic voting machines used by 68.5% of the registered voters in the November 2006 election.
By way of reminder, CIBER is one of three labs that had been testing all American voting machines as part of the ITA structure; the group of labs selected and paid for by the voting machine companies themselves to test their hardware and software — in secret — for Federal “authorities.”
The EAC assessment report from July 2006 of the CIBER test lab in Huntsville, Alabama — also kept secret until the matter was reported by the NY Times last month — found “critical processes were not implemented nor procedures followed.â€
The finally-released EAC documents reveal a mess at the lab which federal, state and local officials around the country had been relying on for assurance that voting machines actually worked for many years…
As the EAC inspector wrote in the now disclosed report, “CIBER is unable to follow their own defined processes and procedures to ensure the quality of their work.†As previously reported, CIBER merged with Wyle Laboratories, another test lab in Huntsville, in a bid to shore up its deficient operation and save lucrative testing contracts. Both companies were examined for quality assurance compliance. “CIBER’s reports provide limited or no descriptions of the testing performed so a reader or reviewer can not tell if all the testing was completed. Cross checking between CIBER and Wyle reports has revealed at times that neither ITA has performed certain tests, expecting that the test was done by the other.â€
…
In addition, during the review, the ITA Practice Director indicated that the testing for a product tends to either use vendor developed tests or new tests developed specifically for the product—they have no standard test methods defined. This makes their testing dependent on vendor input and vulnerable to unique vendor interpretations rather than a core validated set of internal references for training and testing.
The ITA Practice Director in charge of CIBER’s sloppy work is Shawn Southworth. Southworth is no newcomer to electronic voting machines. Prior to federal oversight of the test labs, certification was conducted by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), where Southworth participated as an â€ex officio†member of the Voting Standards Board. Chairing the NASED certification board was Thomas Wilkey, now the EAC’s executive director. Also serving on the qualifying panel with Wilkey and Southworth was Donetta Davidson, current chair of the EAC.
On January 3, 2007, the day before the New York Times revealed CIBER’s non-accreditation and the months of EAC secrecy about the lab failures, CIBER officially responded to the EAC with Southworth providing the excuses to his old NASED colleague Tom Wilkey.
In regard to its failure to have scheduled quality assurance reviews, CIBER explained, “This comment was due to the ITA’s relatively loose handling of meetings. Since we are a small group we often just call each other down the hall for a meeting….â€
For gaps in the CIBER-Wyle merger that caused the lack of testing, CIBER explained, “We were not aware this was an issue or that our scope of testing would change.†Further, “At this moment Shawn is working with Wyle to outline the relationship between the two companies.â€
For lack of standardized testing, CIBER explained, “At the moment, we have not had an opportunity to test the new methods on actual projects. Until this time comes, we will not know for sure how our standardized test methods will perform. The cause of this comment seems to be that we did not know what was missing until it was pointed out.â€
For failure to use National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) technical testing checklists, CIBER explained, “At the time of writing our process and procedures documents we were unaware of these requirements.â€
The secret reports do not reveal which election jurisdictions received untested voting machines and are in sharp contrast to public statements by CIBER about its testing program. The longstanding relationship between Shawn Southworth at CIBER and EAC’s leadership team of Wilkey and Davidson raise questions about the secrecy of the accreditation process. Such questions — and secrecy — however, are par for the course when it comes to the entire process and “oversight” (such as there is any) by the EAC for voting machines and American voting machine companies.
Senator Diane Feinstein has written to EAC chair Davidson demanding answers. Stay tuned…
All this stuff has to be kept top secret, otherwise everyone would suspect fascism.
Alberto Gonzales and the EAC are cut from the same fascist incompetent cloth.
You are doing a heck of a job fascists.
Like Dredd has been sayin all along, it doesn’t matter which testing outfit is doing the testing anyway, Southworth is doing them all, so that makes a ‘nobody’ responsible, which I’m sure will get the blame pinned on
Here is the so called ‘Voting Systems Board’
Names that will come up in this SCANDAL in the future, I’m sure
Link
Jim Hightower has a pretty good “lowdown” on the fix
Link
Okay, was it Dredd or Floridiot who had the evote company stock dumping article? I think that too, should be added to the information here so people can see the full scope of what’s going on. You guys are GREAT, THANKS!
Ancient, I think it was Brad or John Gideon that linked to an article by Michael ^^^…(not sure now)
Someday I’m going to sit down and make a connection chart with all these EAC/Election Center(read this, good stuff) names on it, there’s a website for making them, but I forgot where that is too 🙁
Michael Richardson’s story on what appears to be potential Insider Trading by CIBER is here.
Thanks Brad,
I sure appreciate that, I’ve been having a busy day working on my own business.
There’s really no excuse for this. The Ciber reports with the missing “not tested” penetration analyses have been posted on Black Box Voting since 2004.
After our Web site database was hacked around Nov. 2004, we redid our web site. The new site was put up Dec. 24, 2004. One of the first sets of documents we reposted was the Ciber documents showing that they had a PATTERN of not testing.
As you can see by the date on this link, it’s been up, with its analysis that the labs were omitting their testing, since Jan. 2005:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/2386.html
This was well publicized. There really is no excuse for the EAC. Look at the reports in the link above. It is obvious that they omitted the testing. You don’t need to know ANYTHING technical to see it!
And as if this was not enough, the film of the documents is also shown in the HBO special “Hacking Democracy” with the statements that the labs are not testing the materials; Shawn Southworth also admitted this to me on videotape in July 2004, and I published the transcript of that videotape just days afterwards.
Bev Harris
Founder
Black Box Voting
Floridiot – I believe the NASED “Voting Systems Board” disolved effective July 10, 2006.
Nonetheless, THEY were the ones who would have blessed the decision to decertify CIBER and keep it secret, as far as I can tell.
I’m told they (NASED folks) were incredibly underfunded (what’s new?) and had no or very little staff to do anything.
I think it is even worse now (resource-wise) at the EAC. I guess when you give authority but no resources to a group, you get what you pay for!
Leftisbest, but the only thing I noticed is that the people from the NASED Voting Systems Board and EAC are a lot of the same people, and more than enough are more than likely partisan hacks going way back IMO (see the Election Center above)
And you are correct about the funding on the no voter left behind HAVA, like everything else that has come out of Congress in the last six years…NOTHING but unfunded mandates
Bev, the whole kitten-kaboodle has to be rehashed every couple of years or less, otherwise how will it stay on the radar ? I’m sure I’ve read that before on your site, but alot of it gets lost in the ether if it has no context like the NY times article to bring it back to the fore
Look at all the things that Saltman and Dugger did back in the ’80s, it’s all but forgotten now
Floridot, I agree that the story needs to be updated — Michael Richardson is doing a great job, and his story is certainly not a “rehash” anyway — it is original journalism that would, in a sane world, be in the mainstream media.
I’m really glad you pointed out that the old perps from NASED are now at the EAC.
Also, I call bullshit on the sorry excuse for the EAC and NASED missing this because they were “underfunded.” At the time I first saw a Ciber document with the testing not done, it was Nov. 2002 and I had no funding whatsoever.
If I was able to get a look at one, from asking questions and talking to sources, they surely could have taken five minutes to look for blank not filled in test blocs, since the forms have been being sent directly to them for more than 10 years now.
This isn’t a matter of funding. It’s a matter of incompetence or corruption, or both.
I agree Bev, we do need more good journalists like Michael around to help us put this big puzzle together and shout it from the tree tops so everyone ‘gets it’
I know we all try to stay away from conspiracys (except for me), but this is too important to look away from (too many coincidences)
I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around it
So here goes anyway
On the new DVN above this thread under the title
“NIST certifies iBeta, SysTest Labs under latest requirements guidelines”, iBetas Carolyn Coggins, an ex-systest employee and ex-officio of the Voting Systems Board, says that “Coggins did note that the guidelines are a moving target. The EAC is already re-evaluating the 2005 standards, and new criteria will likely be released later this year”
IMO, the whole operation is a moving target (stay ahead of us dummies, until we go away)
As Leftisbest mentioned above, the Voting Systems Board dissolved on July 10th ’06, about that same time, Ciber had been dis-accredited with no mention to the public for six months, this was exactly at the same time that Dredd and I were trying to put some things together here (try to read all of our suppositions and see what you can make out of it)
To put it bluntly, we eventually tie the whole thing to military contractors and by clicking around their websites brought them here to watch
It appears to me that every time someone gets close to them, they close up (merge) one outfit and make another using all the same people (for the most part) and think that we don’t notice (that way the accountability factor goes to zero)
Does anyone else think that this is a pattern, or is it just dumb luck, or that we are just skimming the surface of a much larger problem ?
The secrecy surrounding this just screams, look deeper
Bev Harris for EAC board membership!!! Make it real!!!
Floridiot #13
It appears to be a deliberate operation because it leaves a deliberate looking pattern. And it leads to the military industrial complex.
Believe me, there are several plans to bring martial law to the US. Controlling elections is one integral part of it that has been in the works for decades.