http://www.josephhall.org/nqb2/
More Uncertified Voting Systems in California?
August 22nd, 2007 (142 views )
In 2003, the California Secretary of State found that DESI (Diebold Election
Systems, Inc.) had marketed and sold voting systems in California that were
running software uncertified by the state. In a déjà vu moment, ES&S
(Election Systems and Software) was
recently found to have sold uncertified hardware (and possibly software) to
a number of jurisdictions in California.
People frequently point back to the 2003 DESI situation in passing when
talking about the current ES&S developments. For example, Kim Zetter of
Wired, an amazing journalist whom I respect immensely, said in a Threat Level
post ("ES&S
to be Rebuked, Fined and Possibly Banned in CA?"):
ES&S is not the first voting
machine company to have sold uncertified equipment in CA. In 2003, the state
discovered that Diebold Election Systems had installed
uncertified software in machines in 17 counties.
(Kim has since corrected her post to reflect the following...)
However, what people don't often realize is that in 2003 there were a number
of vendors besides DESI that were also deploying equipment and software that
had not been federally or state certified (or both). The Secretary of State
hired a consulting firm R&G
Associates, Inc., to do a number of audits to assess which vendors had
deployed what versions of their equipment in all California Jurisdictions.
Those reports are no longer on the California Secretary of State's website, but
can be found via the Internet Archive's Wayback machine: here
is the DESI audit of 17 counties, here
is the second audit of all the remaining counties and here
is a summary and findings of the second audit.
To summarize the summary of the second audit:
- With regard to election
management software (EMS), 25 counties were found to have been
running EMS software that was not federally certified but was state
certified (3 DIMS, 9 DFM, 12 Sequoia and Los Angeles' InkaVote MTS) and 9
counties were found to be running EMS that was neither federally nor state
certified (8 ES&S and 1 Webb).
- With regard other
voting system components, 38 counties had components that were
not federally certified but were state certified (3 DIMS, 9 DFM, 8
ES&S, 17 Sequoia, and Los Angeles' InkaVote MTS) and 19 counties had
components that were neither federally nor state certified (18 DESI (save
Los Angeles) and 1 Webb).
Now, legally speaking, California didn't have a legal requirement for
federal certification until SB
1438 (California's paper trail bill) was passed in 2004, which gave us section
19250 of the California Election Code. However, the California Secretary of
State did have
procedures (see 103(a)(6)) that required a "Nationally Recognized
Testing Laboratory" to qualify voting systems as having met the 1990 Voting System
Standards.
So, in short, it was a mess in 2003... and it wasn't just DESI that wasn't
playing by the rules.
Categories: elections,
certification/testing, vendors,
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