Feds kindle doubts on vote system
By Christopher Drew
The New York Times
Article Last Updated: 01/04/2007 06:13:41 AM MST
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 it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.
The problems with Greenwood Village-based Ciber Inc. underscore long-standing worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing, experts on voting systems say. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices.
The commission acted last summer, but the problem was not disclosed then. Officials at the commission and Ciber confirmed the action in recent interviews.
Ciber, the largest tester of the nation's voting machine software, says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon.
Experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features such as the vote- counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use.
"What's scary is that we've been using systems in elections that Ciber had certified, and this calls into question those systems that they tested," said Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Rubin said although some software bugs showed up quickly, in other instances "you might have to use the systems for a while before something happens."
Officials at the commission and other election experts said it was essential for a lab to follow its quality-control procedures and document all testing processes for anyone to have confidence in the results. Commission officials said they were evaluating the overall diligence of the laboratory and that they did not try to determine whether its weaknesses contributed to problems with specific machines.
Computer scientists have shown that some electronic machines now in use are vulnerable to hacking. Some caution that even a simple software error could affect thousands of votes.
Some elections have been complicated by machines that did not start, flipped votes from one candidate to another or had trouble tallying votes.
Until recently, the labs that test voting software and hardware have operated without federal scrutiny. Even though Washington and the states have spent billions of dollars to install the new systems, the machine manufacturers have always paid for their testing, and little has been disclosed about any flaws that were discovered.
As soon as federal officials began a new oversight program in July, they detected problems with Ciber. The commission held up the Ciber application for interim accreditation, thus barring the company from approving new voting systems in most states.
A spokeswoman for Ciber, Diane C. Stoner, said company executives believed they had addressed all the problems and expected to receive initial federal accreditation this month. Federal officials said they were evaluating the changes made.
Stoner said in a statement that although the Election Assistance Commission had found deficiencies, they "were not because Ciber provided incomplete, inaccurate or flawed testing, but because we did not document to the EAC's liking all of the testing that we were performing."
Besides Ciber, two other companies, SysTest Labs of Denver and Wyle Laboratories, based in El Segundo, Calif., test electronic voting machines. Ciber, which has been testing the machines since 1997, checks just software. Wyle examines hardware, and SysTest can look at both.
Election Assistance Commission chairman Paul S. DeGregorio said SysTest and Wyle received interim accreditations last summer.
The Denver Post reported in 2003 that Ciber officials provided thousands of dollars in sports tickets to top Colorado officials. The gifts came at the same time the company's contracts with the states increased.
Ciber's president also contributed to the governor and state Republican Party. Company and state officials said at the time that the giving had nothing to do with the contracts.