Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson
The more we peel away the layers of the onion, the more we find that it seems to stink to to high heaven. The latest chapter in our continuing series on the hidden world exposed by the recent failures of voting machine test lab CIBER to receive “interim accreditation” from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), is no exception.
The EAC’s current Chair, Donetta Davidson, seems to have a long, storied and increasingly well-documented history of silence concerning electronic voting machine test laboratory problems and has been an active partner with EAC Executive Director Tom Wilkey — whose roll in this mess we’ve examined in detail in previous articles (here, here and here to link to just a few of our reports in this continuing series) — in keeping the public uninformed about failures in the secret test labs.
Wilkey is at the center of the controversy surrounding a failure to disclose to both the public and election officials around the nation that CIBER, Inc.,, the country’s largest so-called “Independent Test Authority†(ITA), was banned last summer from further testing of voting machines. As previously reported by The BRAD BLOG, Wilkey kept test lab problems hidden from public scrutiny for years in his earlier duties at the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) where he was in charge of monitoring and qualifying the labs.
Davidson is now Wilkey’s boss at the EAC where she landed after serving as Colorado’s Secretary of State since 1999 where she was later tied to significant failures by that state in properly certifying electronic voting systems. A judge last year condemned the state’s practices and ordered the state, effectively, to start over from scratch after the debacle. Over the years, the paths of Davidson and Wilkey have crossed many times because of their mutual roles in the hidden world of voting machine testing.
Davidson and Wilkey both have served together on the board of The Election Center, a non-profit group of mysterious background headed by R. Doug Lewis, which provided technical assistance, training, and lobbying support to NASED members. Lewis, a key player in test lab secrecy, mentored Davidson and Wilkey as they gained control of the ITA testing infrastructure.
Davidson has also served on NASED’s Voting Standards Board, as chaired by Tom Wilkey, which qualified the test labs. The two kept in touch, Davidson in Colorado, Wilkey in New York, at conferences, via email, and over the phone. The conferences, often held in tourist destinations, were a special time for the two to get together…
BlackBoxVoting.org was able to obtain under Freedom of Information requests copies of some of the email traffic between Davidson and Wilkey [PDF] (see page 1) as they went about their official business.
On July 15, 2004, Wilkey emailed Davidson arranging a late-night rendezvous:
Two weeks later, after the nightcaps in New Orleans, Davidson sent Wilkey an email on July 29, 2004, that shows a deepening relationship between the two voting machine regulators. Davidson gushed:
A month after “Sis†pined to hear Wilkey’s voice she forwarded to a staffer an email she and Wilkey received from Doug Lewis PDF (p.70) warning about the “crazies†who were critical of the Election Center’s acceptance of conference support funds from the very same electronic voting machine manufacturers whose voting machines were being tested. Davidson and Wilkey closed ranks around the Election Center against the voting integrity “craziesâ€. When Lewis took several weeks off from work for elective surgery Davidson and Wilkey [PDF] (p.28) dipped into their own flower fund for Lewis and shipped him a houseplant as a get-well gift with other Election Center board members.
When Lewis returned to work he fired off a “HEADS UP†notice [PDF] (p.35) to Davidson and Wilkey and others warning, “[T]he attacks are likely to escalate.†This time theâ€crazie†was John Gideon, a respected voting integrity advocate, of VotersUnite.org as well as a frequent Guest Blogger here at The BRAD BLOG.
Gideon had written to the EAC cautioning about the Davidson-Wilkey-Lewis controlled Election Center. Gideon warned, “In accepting funds from the voting machine industry and putting on a program that is strongly sponsored by the same industry, Mr. Lewis and the Election Center are violating their own principles and standards of conduct.â€
That same summer, the U.S. House Science Environment Technology and Standards Subcommittee conducted a hearing on the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and “the role of testing and standards.†Wilkey, who had battled to keep the ITA certification process out of federal control during debate on passage of HAVA, was a star witness. To help Wilkey promote their mutual self-interest, Davidson had an advance chat with U.S. Representative Mark Udall (D-UT) [PDF] (p.62) who served on the subcommittee to soften him up.
“Sis†and “New York Brother†made an effective team to protect their true role in monitoring the test labs. Now Wilkey was suddenly championing NASED’s purported efforts in bringing NIST into the process.
Davidson, as Colorado’s Secretary of State, had her own pipeline into the hidden test lab world and cannot deny her own personal longstanding knowledge of failures within the secret labs. In late 2003, J. Kenneth Blackwell, then-Secretary of State in Ohio, issued a report disclosing that an independent review of ITA approved voting machines by Compuware, had discovered 57 security flaws—after the test labs qualified the machines. Drew Durham, Davidson’s HAVA compliance officer, sent her a pointed email memo [PDF] (pages 4-6):
…
Second, the ITAs need to be queried about what they are testing. New parameters need to be set.
Now, over three years later, Davidson is being asked similar questions by Senator Diane Feinstein as shocking details about the glaring errors and failures of the CIBER test lab continue to emerge from behind the wall of secrecy after a recent, scathing front page exposé by the New York Times.
This stinking onion may well be rotten to the core. Stay tuned as we continue to peel back each of its malodorous layers…
We’d love to have another democratic congressman here in Utah, but we can’t claim Mark Udall — he’s from Colorado.
We need bio’s on these 3 to see where their path’s had to have crossed in the past…prior to the e-voting devolution.
Excellent work Mike.
We ought not forget that excavations at ancient sites shows that their ‘forebrothers’ and ‘foresisters’ were of the same military industrial complex ilk (1988 Article).
You can shock the hell out of the EVM audience with these quotes from an ancient 1988 official excavation report:
(NIST Report 1988, bold added).
No one mentioned that twenty years is enough to have more than “suggested rules” which are admittedly inadequate … which election war lords are ignoring anyway.
And who asked why one person certifies the machines no matter how many ITA companies claim to do the certification? Or who sets the standards of the lone ranger doing the testing (The Lone Tester)?
Doesn’t it appear that, in the ancient past, either the voting rights movement related to the EVM world has failed … or congress has failed … or perhaps both?
Back to the trenches …
To Michael Richardson and Brad — Once again, thanks for an important article.
I’m so glad these folks are finally being exposed. In the recent pieces by Black Box Voting and Democracy for New Hampshire, where we point out the frightening implications in the Holt Bill in making the EAC a permanent fixture, this article helps very much to bring home the point that our concerns about what can happen if the wrong people are in charge are not just theoretical.
In a nutshell: The EAC, which as Richardson points out, is controlled by Wilkey and Davidson and a couple other perps, was originally supposed to be put into HAVA as a body under the legislative branch, giving it the power to make recommendations, but authorizing no policy making power. Somehow, in a move that some of the HAVA architects perceived as a betrayal, the EAC got stuck under the Executive branch — which gave it policy making (and policy changing) powers.
They were appalled, because this makes a fundamental change in our government’s checks and balances, but consoled themselves that HAVA required the EAC to sunset in 2005. Well, we’re in 2007 now, and it’s still going, and the new Holt Bill (HR 811) proposes to make it permanent.
This fundamentally changes the balance of power. It puts a handful of people appointed by the White House in control of policy making for elections.
Now let’s put the two things together — Michael Richardson’s research on EAC chiefs Tom Wilkey and Donetta Davidson, and the proposed extension and empowerment of the EAC as a policy making body controlled by appointees of the White House.
Do you see why many election integrity advocates began screaming like stuck pigs when Holt proposed making the EAC a permanent fixture in its current form?
Bev Harris
Founder – Black Box Voting
Link to EAC home page, which has links to many support ops for voting in the western world. 🙂
Davidson clearly needs to be investigated and indicted for knowingly obstructing justice in one of the key elements of our democracy! This is a very serious crime and, if she is at it’s center, then we need to know for whom she was working – certainly being a Bush “appointee” leads us to the top (which is the case for everything wrong with this country on a daily basis). Since when did this country become a country of “diverting responsibility and plausible deniability” in the pointing of fingers to those underlings who were only taking orders from their superior? Since when has the buck NOT stopped at the Top (President’s desk)? As COS, that’s precisely where it all leads and, even if he was not aware of the wrongdoing, he is still RESPONSIBLE, ACCOUNTABLE, AND INDICTABLE. That’s the way our system has always worked and needs to begin to be reversed now! Investigate Davidson (and her connections to Diebold, Ken Stillwell, et al) and see where this cobweb of lies and corruption leads! I don’t believe America will be surprised when it learns the ugly truth.
Davidson and Wilkey will be going to jail when this investigation is over.
Also, WHO BANNED THE FURTHER TESTING OF THE VOTING MACHINES BY CYBER, INC.???????? THEREIN LIES THE REAL “CULPRIT” IN THIS CAN OF WORMS. WE WANT TO KNOW THE NAME OF THE INDIVIDUAL WHO BANNED FURTHER TESTING.
I got an E-mail from Moveon.org calling for members to sign on to the Holt bill.
I hate this. I’m so tired of things being shoved down our throats without any public debate.