U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines

joshdick writes to point out a NYTimes story on the decertification of Ciber Inc. from testing electronic voting systems. It will come as a surprise to no-one here on Slashdot that experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use. From the article: "A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests... The federal Election Assistance Commission made this decision last summer, but the problem was not disclosed then... Ciber... says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon."

Comments

Personal experience with Ciber

[elrous0]

Having worked with Ciber before myself, I'm not surprised. They basically leech off government agencies foolish enough to hire them. They charge a lot of money to essentially tell government agencies what they want to hear (which, in this case was "The e-voting machines are fine"). Their actual research methodology is, shall we say, "suspect."

Re:WTF?

[simm1701]

Paper print out for voter's records, paper print out on a roll visible behind safety glass screen that the voter can verify which is archived for verification - its not difficult - shop tills (checkouts) have been doing the same thing for years.