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

Posted by kdawson on from the watching-the-watchers dept.

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."

2 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The real question by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 0, Troll

    The real question is whether or not Ciber were following their procedures, but why they were not. There should be a full-scale investigation into things like, oh, maybe how much money has passed between Diebold and Ciber, and how much stock ownership Diebold has in Ciber and vice-versa. If you want to know why things happen the way the do, one merely needs to follow the money.
    Probably nothing sinister here, apart from the fact that it's cheaper to claim to have done such and such test, rather than to actually do it.

    See, it's a win-win situation for everybody involved (except for democracy, of course):

    • Ciber wins by charging lots of money for a service that it doesn't actually perform
    • The people having chosen Diebold win by not being embarrassed that they chose a brand of machine which would fail the test (... because the test was never actually performed, so the machine cannot fail...)
    • Diebold wins by not getting caught (... and they do not even need to bribe Ciber for the favor, see above...)
    • The Republicans win the election
    Conclusion: if the Republicans chose the supplier for the machines, the Democrats should have the right to chose the certification lab...
  2. Re:WTF? - correction by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 0, Troll

    Give me our good old fashioned paper voting up here in Canada any day.

    should read

    Jesus Murphey, this system is hosed, give me our flippin paper and pencil crayon voting up here in Canada any day, eh gorby ?