Follow The BRAD BLOG!
&

Latest Featured Reports | Thursday, April 5, 2012
Who's 'Remaking' YOUR Ballot?
Voted paper ballots too large to fit in op-scanners 'remade' by election officials, behind close doors, in WI, IL and beyond...
'CLASS' WARFARE: Santa Monica Students Pepper Sprayed
Campus cops use chemicals on students trying to voice opinion about 400% tuition increases at Board of Trustees meeting...
43 WI Republicans Took Inappropriate Lobbying Gifts from ALEC: Complaint
Center for Media and Democracy alleges unreported 'scholarships' from corporate lobby group violates law. Secret meetings do too...
w/ Brad & Desi
TODAY: Biden slams GOP attacks on clean energy; Trying to save the disappearing Maldives; FDA okays BPA; Pesticides killing the bees?; PLUS: Fox 'News' debunks itself!...
Previous GNRs: 3/29/12 - 3/27/12 - Archives...
HAND-COUNT CORRECTS COMPUTER ELECTION RESULTS FLIPPED IN FL
Actual winners of March 13th Palm Beach races finally determined, but same failed computer vote tabulators used in 14 states...
COMPUTER DECLARES WRONG 'WINNERS' IN FL
Several incorrect candidates were reported to have won Palm Beach County, FL elections after Dominion/Sequoia op-scan system mistallied paper ballot results...
Super-PACS to 'Suppress the Vote!'
Ominous NY Times op-ed warns unaccountable Super-PACs likely to be a powerful Republican tool to disenfranchise voters this year...
TODAY: Another big win for Big Oil; Another offshore leak; Another U.N. warning; Another study shows Right hates science; PLUS: Poo Power! Icky to awesome...
GOP's 'War for WI' & Battle Against Voters
The BRAD BLOG's legal ace Ernie Canning explains it all for you...in a new interview by Joan Brunwasser at OpEdNews...
'HAND-COUNTS ONLY' FOR NY COUNTY
Bi-partisan election commission in Columbia County, NY refuses op-scanners, say hand-counted paper ballots only way to assure accuracy...
ONLINE ELECTION ATTACKED
A 10,000 computer cyber-attack hobbled a Canadian election over the weekend. Other than that, Internet voting is a great idea!...
THE BRAD BLOG'S RECOMMENDED #OWS 'DEMAND'
All citizens 18+ get to vote. Period. And on hand-counted paper ballots...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
(All times listed as PACIFIC TIME unless noted)
Media Appearance Archives...
Special Coverage Archives
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
U.S. Chamber of Commerce 'Terror Tools' Spy Plot...
Wisconsin 2011 Supreme Court Election Debacle...
It Isn't Journalism: Woeful MSM Coverage of Wisconsin's Supreme Court Election 'Recount'
Corporate media fails to tell story of massive irregularities, e-vote failures...
Japan Quake/Tsunami/Nuke Emergency...
6/4/11: Fukushima Radiation at Highest Level Since Crisis Began
Germany announces plan to dismantle all nukes by 2022...
5/12/11: TEPCO Admits Unit 1 Reactor 'Meltdown', Fuel Rods Exposed
Radiation believed leaking through hole in bottom of containment vessel...
3/30/11: AUDIO: Brad on KPFK w/ Fukushima News and More...
Joined by the lovely Desi Doyen of the Green News Report...
3/29/11: 'Maximum Alert': Crisis Continues, TEPCO Prez Hospitalized
PLUS: A glimpse at living conditions for the heroic plant workers...
3/29/11: 'Green News Report' - Special Coverage: Japan Fallout
Fukushima's nuke disaster leads to political shift in Germany; Congressional concerns about US nuke evacuation plans...
3/27/11: TEPCO 'Very Sorry': Radiation Spikes, Work Remains Perilous
Plant operator apologizes, again; AP reports they 'all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history' in designing safe-guards'...
3/25/11: 'Grave And Serious': More Comparison to Chernobyl Levels
Rupture feared; Workers contaminated; New evacs 'recommended'...
PLUS: German study uses French data to corroborate findings from Austrian, U.S. scientists, suggesting Fukushima disaster should be reclassified as 'level 7' accident, on par with Chernobyl...
3/25/11: Brad on 'Randi Rhodes Show' on Disaster, US 'Fallout'
Breaking developments and speculation on the supposed 'nuclear renaissance' previously scheduled for the US...
3/24/11: 'Step at a Time & a Few More Steps': Disturbing New Science
Stabilization continues, as new data suggests 50% of radioactive cesium released by Chernobyl already released by Daiichi's reactors...
3/24/11: 'Green News Report'- Special Coverage: Japan Disaster
Death toll rising; Tap water warning lifted in Tokyo, spreading elsewhere; Radiation hospitalizes workers; Support for nukes drops in US; PLUS: Struggling to maintaining tradition amidst disaster...
3/23/11: Brad's KPFK Intvw w/ VOA's Steve Herman in Tokyo
'Neutron beams', water 'panic', black smoke and the public responses from TEPCO, the government and the people of Japan, LIVE from Tokyo...
3/23/11: Setbacks: Black Smoke, Evacuations, Tokyo Tap Water
'Panic' reported as stores run dry of bottled water after government says iodine in metropolitan water unsafe for infants...
3/22/11: 'Razor-Thin Margins', Positive Progress at Fukushima
Control room re-opened as some power returns, workers attempt to restore cooling systems; U.S. NRC offers mixed signals...
3/22/11: 'Green News Report' - Special Coverage: Nuclear Crisis
Fukushima on edge; Japan's wind farms to the rescue; New US nuke reviews; PLUS: Oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico...
3/20/11: 'Closer to Bringing Situation Under Control': Sun & Mon
Stabilization precarious; UPDATED: Gray smoke forces evacuation...
3/19/11: Some Reactors 'Stabilized' as War Breaks Out Elsewhere
PLUS: Radiation detected in food, water; New Gulf oil slick discovered; War protesters arrested; Slow news week continues...
3/18/11: 'Renewed Nuclear Chain Reaction Feared': Friday Fukushima
Spent fuel rod danger; Fallout detected in S. California; Wind 'saving Japan's ass'; Coulter: Radiation 'good for you'; PM's office tweets...
3/17/11: Brad Interviews Palast: TEPCO Plans for New Nukes in TX
Govt fraud investigator on "bankrupt, corrupt, criminal" nuke companies...
3/17/11: 'Green News Report' - Special Coverage: Crisis in Japan
Compounding natural, humanitarian and spiraling nuclear disasters - desperate measures to hold off a nightmare...
3/17/11: VIDEO: Close-up Aerial Footage of Crippled Plant
TEPCO offers most detailed view yet of ravaged Fukushima reactors...
3/16/11: Desperation: Helicopters Drop Water On Hot Nuke Reactors
Def Minister: 'We could not delay further'; Four risky drops on Unit 3; Water said in Unit 4 fuel pool; Water cannon trucks next | VIDEO...
3/16/11: Dozens of Countries, Not U.S., Tell Citizens to Leave Tokyo
UK, Germany, France more worried than us. Who ya gonna believe?...
3/15/11: SMOKE BILLOWS FROM FUKUSHIMA'S REACTOR 3
Workers evacuated as radiation levels rose quickly; Govt's chief spokesperson says smoke believed to be radioactive steam...
3/15/11: 'Green News Report': Japan on Brink of Nuclear Disaster
Natural, humanitarian and now man-made disaster, as 50 nuclear plant workers stand in the way of nuclear meltdown...
3/14/11: PM: RADIATION DANGER, EVACS WIDENED, 'STAY CALM'
Explosions at Reactors 2 & 4; Fuels Rods at Unit 2 'Half Exposed';
All but 50 workers evacuated from plant...
3/13/11: EXPLOSION AT FUKUSHIMA'S NUKE REACTOR UNIT 3
U.S. 7th Fleet repositioned after exposure to radioactive cloud
Sunday live blogging 2nd EXPLOSION at Fukushima...
3/13/11: VIDEO: From Within the Tsunami, a Town Engulfed
Watch as a town disappears in minutes...
3/12/11: EXPLOSION ROCKS FUKUSHIMA NUKE REACTOR UNIT 1
Cooling System Fails at Unit 3 | Govt: 'Partial Meltdown' Under Way Saturday day, night live blog following 1st EXPLOSION at Fukushima...
3/11/11: NUCLEAR EMERGENCIES AT 5 REACTORS
Friday day, night live blog until EXPLOSION at Fukushima reactor...
3/11/11: 'Big Government Tyranny' Saved Countless Lives
Strict building codes in Japan likely impossible now here...
3/11/11: 8.9 QUAKE, TSUNAMI STRIKES JAPAN - VIDEO
Unprecedented disaster strikes, towns washed away in seconds...
WikiLeaks / Julian Assange...
More Special Coverages Pages...

February 13th, 2007


Bush-Appointed Chair Found Near Center of the Growing Scandal/Cover-Up Which Even Included a Stealth Attack on Election Integrity Advocate (and BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger) John Gideon...

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...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 2/13/2007 4:07pm PT  


February 9th, 2007


EAC Exec. Dir. Tom Wilkey Lends CIBER 'Test' Lab a Hand, As 'Confidential' Secrets about Their Failures Continue to Ooze Out...

Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson

The BRAD BLOG has learned that Thomas Wilkey, Executive Director (bio [PDF]) of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), has now extended the deadline for CIBER, Inc. to qualify for interim accreditation to test the nation’s voting machines, despite previously reported disastrous testing conditions over several years discovered at the lab.

Wilkey previously kept problems at the CIBER test lab hidden behind a wall of secrecy including the non-accreditation of the controversial “independent testing authority” (ITA) laboratory as discovered and revealed by The New York Times last month.

CIBER, the nation’s most prodigious voting machine test lab, was banned from testing last summer when accreditation responsibilities shifted from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) to the EAC. However, the public and election officials relying on CIBER’s testing where not informed of the ban until the Times disclosed the lab shutdown in January 2007, long after the elections in 2006 were allowed to move forward on CIBER's "tested" voting machines.

Even after the Times exposé, the EAC head kept the assessment reports [PDF], which detailed lab problems, secret until a subpoena threat by the New York State Board of Elections forced release of the reports. The assessments that Wilkey kept hidden from the public revealed a shocking history of sloppy, incomplete and non-existent testing.

Only after increasing pressure, including from Senator Diane Feinstein, to come clean about CIBER’s failures, Wilkey wrote to the company on January 26, 2007 [PDF] giving them 30 days to correct the identified deficiencies. Now, as the deadline approaches, Wilkey has itemized the problems in need of correction by CIBER and extended the deadline [PDF] for them until March 5, 2007.

Wilkey, once again as expected, has been very kind to the company that he seems to have spent years protecting.

Meanwhile, in written testimony [PDF] Thursday to the EAC, David Alderman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) explained why CIBER thus far has failed to gain a favorable recommendation from the NIST for future accreditation—CIBER actually missed the application deadline...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 2/9/2007 12:34pm PT  


February 6th, 2007


Thomas Wilkey Has Kept Problems at the Labs Hidden from the Public and Behind a Wall of Secrecy for Years...

Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson

Thomas Wilkey, Executive Director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), seems to bear more direct responsibility for the growing voting machine test lab scandal than any other person. Let's connect a few dots and sift through a bit of murky alphabet soup.

For nearly a decade, Wilkey has overseen the testing process of electronic voting machines, keeping recently revealed problems with the so-called “Independent Testing Authorities” (ITA) a secret from public and elections officials alike. Wilkey also tried to prevent federal oversight of the testing process during the development of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and worked to keep the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) out of his hidden world.

The EAC inherited the responsibility of qualifying voting machine test laboratories from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), where Wilkey strategically positioned himself to control the test laboratories. When HAVA eventually assumed responsibility for the test laboratories from NASED and handed it to the EAC, Wilkey worked behind the scenes to try to keep control over the labs for himself.

Wilkey, formerly the director of the New York State Board of Elections, was appointed to his present position at the helm of the EAC on June 20, 2005. At the time of his appointment, Wilkey chaired the NASED Voting Standards Board, which oversaw the testing labs for voting machine qualification. Wilkey, a founder and past-president of NASED, also chaired the organization’s ITA Committee from 1998 until his departure to the EAC.

As well, Wilkey also served several tours of duty on the board of directors of The Election Center, a non-profit group of dubious (or at least mysterious) background headed by R. Doug Lewis, who is also one of the founders of NASED. The Election Center acted as technical consultants to NASED on voting machine testing. From 1998 until his move to the EAC then, Wilkey was in charge of every aspect of control, selection, and oversight of the voting machine test labs.

His involvement, therefore, in the entire process and the recently revealed failed accreditation of one of the previously-approved labs, CIBER, Inc., deserves close scrutiny --- particularly as one reads Wilkey's bio [PDF] as posted over at the EAC website which describes him as...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 2/6/2007 9:35am PT  


February 1st, 2007


'CIBER Has Absolutely No Idea What It's Talking About'
Testing Secrecy Has Allowed CIBER to Profit From Sloppy Work

Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson

CIBER, Inc., the nation’s largest so-called “independent test authority” (ITA) of electronic voting machines, is at the center of a growing scandal about lax testing of voting equipment. The recent release of a long-kept secret assessment of the company by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) detailing a shocking record of sloppy, incomplete or non-existent testing by CIBER led the test lab’s CEO, Mac Slingerlend, to call the report “old news” in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News.

While CIBER’s shortcomings may be “old news” to Slingerlend, unaware election officials around the nation are angered at not being informed by the EAC prior to the November 2006 elections about voting machine models “tested” by CIBER in use by 68.5% of the registered voters in the country.

Last year the EAC took over testing responsibilities for electronic voting machines from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and refused to grant CIBER interim accreditation because of numerous deficiencies at the test lab located in Huntsville, Alabama.

Slingerlend and CIBER founder Bobby Stevenson both took advantage of the “old news” to unload thousands of shares of stock

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 2/1/2007 1:57pm PT  


January 29th, 2007


Federal Voting Machine 'Oversight' Committee Finally Releases 'Soiled Laundry' on Banned Test Lab, CIBER, After Subpoena Threats...

Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

Hours after our report last week on threatened subpoenas against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and its banned voting machine test laboratory, CIBER, Inc., by the New York State Board of Elections, the company supplied information concerning its lack of accreditation to New York officials. Enraged NY State Election Commissioner Doug Kellner called the secret reports “soiled laundry” that both the company and EAC had been trying to hide.

Friday, the EAC reacted to the disclosure by CIBER of confidential EAC documents by releasing the assessment reports upon which last summer’s decision for non-accreditation of CIBER was based. The documents, kept secret by the EAC for half a year, reveal a shocking level of incompetence and negligence by the “independent testing authority” (ITA) lab which tested electronic voting machines used by 68.5% of the registered voters in the November 2006 election.

By way of reminder, CIBER is one of three labs that had been testing all American voting machines as part of the ITA structure; the group of labs selected and paid for by the voting machine companies themselves to test their hardware and software --- in secret --- for Federal "authorities."

The EAC assessment report from July 2006 of the CIBER test lab in Huntsville, Alabama --- also kept secret until the matter was reported by the NY Times last month --- found “critical processes were not implemented nor procedures followed.”

The finally-released EAC documents reveal a mess at the lab which federal, state and local officials around the country had been relying on for assurance that voting machines actually worked for many years...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 1/29/2007 6:05am PT  


January 26th, 2007


Election Board Ire as EAC Fails to Disclose 'Soiled Laundry' on Failure to Accredit Voting System Test Lab

Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

Tom Wilkey, former executive director of the New York State Board of Elections, and now the executive director of the Election Assistance Commission, has refused to answer questions from New York election officials about the non-accreditation of voting machine test lab Ciber, Inc. A letter from a state election official describes the lack of response for requested information as "truly outrageous and scandalous." That refusal "to open the curtain that hides their soiled laundry," may lead to subpoenas by the State Board.

The ongoing secrecy, and apparent duplicity, of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) surrounding the failure of Ciber to be given federal accreditation to testing voting machines began last summer causing an unknown number of voters around the country to vote on improperly tested electronic voting machines in last November's election. The EAC failed to notify elections officials or the public about what they had already discovered concerning the poor state of testing conditions and procedures by the lab.

The EAC secrecy has been particularly troublesome in New York where Ciber has been testing equipment specifically under contract with the state. The EAC was created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 and is charged with accrediting "independent testing authorities" to examine and certify electronic voting machines. Ciber failed to gain interim accreditation when the testing duties shifted from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) to the EAC last July.

As discussed in a report yesterday --- which included a series of 'very friendly' notes between Wilkey and the current chair of the EAC, Donetta Davidson --- Wilkey’s silence may stem from his role as chair of the Voting Systems Board at NASED prior to his position at the EAC. The failures of Ciber to properly conduct and document security testing of voting machines that led to the denial of interim accreditation occurred during Wilkey’s watch at NASED where he served with his "Sis", Davidson, as he referred to her in the emails between the two.

Davidson was on Wilkey’s NASED certification board along with "ex officio" member Shawn Southworth of Ciber, Inc. Wilkey and Davidson’s silence about the failures of Ciber has angered election officials around the nation who had relied on Ciber’s certification of their voting machines in the November 2006 election.

As also recently reported, the delay in the public disclosure of the problems at Ciber, conveniently allowed both the firm's founder and its CEO the time needed to unload $1.7 million of company stock before the news would eventually be reported by the New York Times earlier this month.

New York, unlike the rest of the states, did not rush into purchase of new, expensive voting machines without public hearings and more thorough testing and ended up being sued by the U.S. Justice Department for HAVA non-compliance. Commissioner Doug Kellner of the New York State Board of Elections has reacted to the EAC stonewalling about Ciber with a call for a subpoena in hopes of getting some answers.

In an email announcement on Wednesday, Kellner expressed his outrage in no uncertain terms...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By Michael Richardson on 1/26/2007 9:35am PT  


January 24th, 2007


Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

Election Assistance Commission Executive Director Thomas Wilkey moved to the EAC after serving on the National Association of State Election Directors Voting System Board, which he chaired.

Wilkey's current boss at the EAC is Donetta Davidson, Chair of the federal commission. Davidson is a former president of NASED and served with Wilkey on the Voting System Board, which was tasked with certifying "independent testing authorities" to perform tests on electronic voting machines used throughout America.

In 2002, the Help America Vote Act transferred testing responsibility from NASED to the EAC, which took over the duties in July 2006. When it came time to issue interim accreditation to the test labs, EAC technical specialists found that Ciber, Inc. had failed to adequately document security testing while under NASED's certification. Serving "ex officio" on the Voting Systems Board, headed by Wilkey, was Shawn Southworth of Ciber.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has since recommended to the EAC that two other test labs perform the work formerly done by Ciber. Davidson, who twice testified before Congressional hearings last year on voting machine certification, failed to disclose the problems with the Ciber test lab to members of Congress. Senator Diane Feinstein has since asked Wilkey to explain why Ciber was not issued interim accreditation and why the public and election officials around the country were not notified before the November 2006 elections.

During the six months of secrecy from the EAC about the test lab ban, Ciber founder Bobby Stevenson sold $1.6 million worth of stock in the company. Ciber CEO Mac Slinglend also did some insider trading unloading $115,000 worth of the stock while the public was unaware of the EAC action against the company.

The failures of Ciber testing that led to the denial of interim accreditation were not under the EAC watch but instead arose under certification by Wilkey's NASED's Voting Systems Board.

Can EAC Chair Davidson be counted on to properly supervise her new subordinate? Maybe not, according to emails obtained by BlackBoxVoting from 2004 when both served on the NASED certification panel. Email traffic between the pair raise questions about their relationship.

On July 15, 2004 at 2:21 pm, Wilkey emailed Davidson: "You are actually reading your emails...WOW!!! Yes I will see you on Saturday. I get in about 9 pm so we will have a nightcap if you are not out partying on Bourbon Street. Love, Your New York Brother."

Two weeks later on July 29, 2004, after the nightcaps in New Orleans, Davidson sent Wilkey an email: "My Dearest Brother, Life has not slowed down, but I am staying out of trouble. Hope to talk to you soon, on the PHONE. That way I get to hear your voice. Love your Sis."

Now the cozy relationship between the two former NASED regulators can blossom at EAC where Wilkey reports to Davidson.

Wilkey's role in certifying electronic voting machines goes back a long way. According to his official agency biography, Wilkey helped draft the first voting system standards in country back in 1983 while working with the Federal Elections Commission.

"An early proponent of the creation of the National Association of State Election Directors, Wilkey has served as secretary, treasurer, vice-president and was elected president for 1996-1997. In January, Wilkey was named chair of NASED's Independent Test Authority Accreditation Board, which reviews and approves laboratories and technical groups for the testing of voting systems under NASED's national accreditation program. He was reappointed chair in 2000."

Wilkey's watchdog role over voting system security also gained him appointment to an advisory board of the Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program, which assists six million military and overseas voters. Ciber, one of Wilkey's NASED approved test labs, since banned, conducted the security testing of the FVAP computer system.

Now "New York Brother" and "Sis" are tasked with protecting the voting machine security for the entire nation. The earlier role of the two EAC leaders in oversight of Ciber's lax work that led to non-accreditation may well be the subject of Congressional hearings before the year is out.

By Michael Richardson on 1/24/2007 10:56am PT  


January 18th, 2007


Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

The efforts of the Election Assistance Commission to accredit test laboratories for the nation's electronic voting machines have left the country with only two labs, SysTest and Wyle, operating on interim approval; and one laboratory, Ciber, left unaccredited since the National Association of State Election Directors got out of the certification business last year.

Published reports indicate the Ciber lab was denied interim accreditation last summer for a history of inadequate quality assurance and inability to document that critical tests were performed. The EAC is saying little about the matter to the media and has now been requested by Senator Diane Feinstein to explain why Ciber was not accredited and why disclosure of that fact was kept from election officials around the nation.

EAC regulatory staff might just want to peek at Ciber's website where they will discover that the banned Ciber lab has merged its testing division with EAC approved Wyle lab. Ciber boasts, "The CIBER-Wyle team is your single source for independent voting machine testing."

"With the growing demand for premier independent software/hardware testing of Voting Machines, CIBER and Wyle have joined forces are now offering the quality independent testing solutions needed for voting machine systems supporting the Election Assistance Commission standards."

"Our teams, co-located in Huntsville, Alabama, have now integrated best of breed testing solutions, CIBER for software testing and Wyle for their hardware testing capabilities. By teaming we now offer complete independent voting system testing solutions for voting system vendors and for state governments."

"We combined the two most experienced labs and staffs in the country into one efficient organization. We provide a co-located testing facility on one campus for all your testing needs. Successfully tested and recommended for certification the industry leaders in voting systems. Specialized support for prequalification testing and anomaly resolution/verification."

The Ciber website also has a pitch for state business as well as electronic voting machines vendors but they should have used a grammar check. "The CIBER-Wyle team will help you to make sure that your election is run with little or no room for criticism. They will assist in areas such as assuring that you have the current certified copy of your voting vendor's hardware and software and that you will have implemented a set of state voting standards that will meet the [sic] with the majority of the voters' approval, taking into consideration the usability and accessibility of the voting system."

Ciber's role in testing of voting technology was more than issuing reports to vendors and states, like Florida, which rely upon Ciber reports for their technology advice to local election officials. Despite the growing number of reports about inadequate testing, now leaking out about Ciber's failures, which reveal long-standing problems of deficiency, the test lab also serviced the Department of Defense.

Ciber's self-promotional web page about the Federal Voting Assistance Program provides Senator Feinstein with new areas needing review for sloppy work on the voting system that assists military voters.

"The scope of the work included testing and validation of both the system's functionality and security....based on our certification as an Independent Test Authority, CIBER was awarded this work....Ciber performed system security penetration assessments....Based on this work, CIBER documented system exposures and vulnerabilities. Periodic penetration assessment continued during system operation."

The merger of the two "independent" test labs into one team raises red flags about Wyle's interim EAC accreditation status; while Ciber's voting security testing for the Defense Department, based on its earlier NASED certification, may soon be getting review by Congress.

By Michael Richardson on 1/18/2007 12:44pm PT  


January 16th, 2007


The EAC and Its Outgoing Commissioner Paul DeGregorio's Campaign to Plant Misinformation in the American Media...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, Executive Director, VotersUnite.Org

In the weeks following last November's mid-term election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sent retiring Commissioner Paul DeGregorio out to cheerlead and to make the voters feel warm and cozy about the election.

The Commissioner keeps telling the voters that we should have confidence in the election process. He constantly states that everything worked just fine except for isolated incidents. Meanwhile, he ignores the facts about failures that happened across the nation. He ignores data such as that which is reported in "E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections" written by VotersUnite, VoteTrustUSA, VoterAction and Pollworkers For Democracy.

Early last week Commissioner DeGregorio had an Op-Ed posted by a McClatchy-Tribune News Service newspaper in Mississippi. In this Op-Ed he opens with the following paragraph:

The 2006 election was a success: Most of the millions of Americans who cast their ballots did so with confidence. Despite some isolated problems, exit polls showed that in 98 percent of U.S. jurisdictions, the process worked so well that voter confidence rose to levels not seen since before Election 2000.

My immediate attention was brought to the mention of an exit poll which showed that 98 percent of voters had a confidence level not seen since before 'Election 2000'. This was news to me and I wanted to see this exit poll so I sent an email to the EAC's spokeswoman, Jeannie Layson:

To: jlayson
From: John Gideon
Subject: DeGregorio Op-Ed
Cc:

In the op-ed that Commissioner DeGregorio has written for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service he says, "Despite some isolated problems, exit polls showed that in 98 percent of U.S. jurisdictions, the process worked so well that voter confidence rose to levels not seen since before Election 2000."

Who conducted that national exit-poll and where are the results posted? I think that is an important piece of information and would like to discuss it with my colleagues and perhaps write an article on the results.

I'm a little surprised that the EAC considers over 18,000 under-votes in Sarasota Co., Florida as an isolated problem. Or over 18,000 voters walking away without voting in Denver, Colorado. Or the just revealed news that Sequoia and David Orr in Chicago/Cook Co. have admitted to failures, including using voting equipment that was never tested, that cost voters their voices. Or any of the 1022 incidents in over 300 jurisdictions in 36 state that were reported in the VotersUnite/VoteTrustUSA/VoterAction/Pollworkers For Democracy report on the recent election.

Thank you

Here is the remarkable response I received back from Ms. Layson...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By John Gideon on 1/16/2007 6:05am PT  


January 13th, 2007


Guest Logged By Michael Richardson

Last week Christopher Drew of the New York Times informed a shocked nation that the leading "independent testing authority" of electronic voting machines, Ciber, Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colorado had not been following its own quality-control procedures and could not document that it completed required tests for reliability and security.

The federal Election Assistance Commission, which accredited the Ciber testing lab, secretly pulled its interim accreditation last year, without informing the public or election officials relying on Ciber's results. Independent testing centers, including Ciber, are not really independent at all and are funded by voting machine vendors to whom they issue their testing reports and only recently have come under federal scrutiny.

The EAC has yet to explain why it withheld the accreditation of Ciber from the voting public and the omission has entangled the controversial election oversight panel in the growing national distrust of electronic voting machines and may threaten its continued existence.

How many voting machines might be affected by the lax security inspections of Ciber?

Respected electronic voting machine authority and self-described "politechnologist" Joseph Hall did some digging. "The answer was not something I would have predicted...I knew Ciber did a good deal of software ITA testing, but it looks like, in terms of voting system deployment, that Ciber qualified the voting systems used by 68.5% of the registered voters (67.9% of precincts) in the 2006 election."

Hall explained the difficulty he encountered to acquire his data. "Since the test reports are not public, it is difficult to find information about who tested what when."

Undeterred by the veil of secrecy surrounding the testing of electronic voting machines, Hall used old testing identifiers, called NASED numbers, to track the deployment of voting machines around the nation. Ciber tested any machine that had a NASED number beginning with the digit "1".

"With this key piece of information, we can use published lists of qualified voting systems to determine which models were qualified by Ciber." explains Hall. Discovering that Ciber tested the vast majority of machines in the country Hall says, "In fact, it is much more simple to list which systems were not qualified by Ciber."

Hall concludes, "I suppose it would have been completely impractical to decertify all these systems. Even decertifying those systems in which the qualification testing Ciber performed was specifically lacking would likely be a significant double-digit percentage of voting systems used by registered voters."

One thing the ITA laboratories, or any other testing agency, cannot determine is if an electronic voting machine has been rigged with malicious self-deleting software code. All voting machines and optical scan vote-counters are subject to being hacked with self-deleting code that cannot be detected with any test. Self-deleting software code does its dirty deeds, including flipping or erasing votes, and then deletes itself erasing any sign of tampering.

A growing number of election integrity advocates are realizing that software technology has no place in the election systems of our country because of the inability to even detect mischief. The solution that is emerging is both simple and obvious, a return to time-tested hand-counting of paper ballots.

By Michael Richardson on 1/13/2007 8:35am PT  


January 9th, 2007


Federal Commission Admits There is Paperwork on 'Barred' Voting Machine Testing Lab, Will Release 'When the Process is Complete'
Lab Was Secretly Refused Credentials in July, State and Local Voting Officials Were Kept in Dark Throughout November Elections Until NYTimes' Revelations...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, Executive Director, VotersUnite.Org

Moving the ball forward a bit in regard to New York Times' stunning report last week that Ciber was refused interim accreditation last July. I've been able to learn a bit more about the existence of the paperwork concerning that denial of accreditation.

The refusal, according to the Times front page exclusive last week, was due to an inspection the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) conducted at the lab. Ciber is one of the three e-voting test labs or Independent Testing Authoritys (ITAs) which are paid by the Voting Machine Companies themselves to test their hardware and software prior to federal certification.

But contradictions have been flowing from the EAC in the considerable fallout from the Times report which revealed the commission not only failed to accredit Ciber, they also failed to tell the public, or even state and local Elections Officials who used the systems approved by Ciber for last November's election. What nobody --- except the EAC knew --- was that, according to the Times Ciber "was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests."

While at first the EAC had denied there was any paperwork documenting the reasons why they had denied interim accreditation to Ciber, I've now been able to learn from an EAC source that such paperwork actually exists. The EAC has simply, again, withheld it from the public. So far. I was then able to get confirmation about it from an EAC spokesperson, along with a hint as to when the world might get to see the actual reasons they withheld accreditation from the private testing lab...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

By John Gideon on 1/9/2007 4:20pm PT  


January 3rd, 2007


Action Taken Months Ago But Not Disclosed by Compromised U.S. Election Assistance Commission!
UPDATE: Company Reported to be a Big Republican Donor, CEO Dumped Shares of Stock Just Before Year's End!

A front page blockbuster set for tomorrow's New York Times reveals that one of the three approved labs which make up the so-called Independent Testing Authority (ITA) responsible for testing all electronic voting systems prior to certification has been barred from testing by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC).

The Times reports that Ciber Inc. was barred from further testing last summer, but that the EAC failed to disclose the information to the public.

Thousands of electronic voting machines "okayed" by the Ciber labs were in use last November, despite what the Times reports as a failure by the company to follow quality-control procedures and an inability to "document that it was conducting all the required tests."

As The BRAD BLOG reported earlier today, thousands of reports of e-voting machine failures were documented across the country in a report released this week by a number of non-partisan election watchdog organizations.

Ciber is one of three companies selected and paid for by the Voting Machine Companies themselves to secretly test their electronic voting systems. The results of the testing by the ITA labs and the documented failures or successes are never released to the public.

As the Times is now reporting on their website:

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 company, Ciber Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., has also come under fire from analysts hired by the state of New York over its plans to test new voting machines for the state. New York could eventually spend $200 million to replace its aging lever devices.

Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore long-standing worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. 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.
...
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.

“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.
...
Even though Washington and the states have spent billions to install the new technologies, the machine manufacturers have always paid for the tests that assess how well they work, and little has been disclosed about any flaws that were discovered.

While The BRAD BLOG has documented myriad failures on electronic voting machines over the last several months and years, we've also documented the dreadful failure of the EAC to perform oversight and the fact that they have been wholly compromised by partisan appointments, including their current (though outgoing) chairman Paul DiGrigorio and have withheld important reports from the public when the information revealed in them was not to the liking of the Republicans who head the committee.

As well, we ran shocking excerpts from an exclusive interview with the first head of the EAC, DeForest Soaries, detailing his unhappiness with both the White House and the Republican-led Congress to properly fund the commission formed by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 to oversee the certification of voting systems and other related matters. Soaries was appointed by George W. Bush and charged, in the shocking interview, that there are "no standards" for the voting equipment in use in America, that the White House and Congress misled him about the commission and "made things worse through the passage of the Help America Vote Act," and that due to underfunding and lack of attention, America now has an "inability to trust the technology that we use" in elections which he says are "ripe for stealing."

The excerpts we ran were from a network news interview with Soaries which was never aired by the network.

UPDATE: Lambert from Correntwire has some excellent details on Ciber's big money ties to the Republican party. He's critical of the Times' failure to point that out given they supplied some $72,000 to Republican candidates between 2001 and 2004. As well, he's got an excellent catch concerning the fact that Ciber's CEO dumped a bunch of stock just before year's end, leading Lambert to ask, "Insider trading, anyone?"

FURTHER UPDATE: Howard Stanislavic detailed a number of flaws discovered in Ciber's testing processes in New York last October at VoteTrustUSA.org. Needless to say, the Times gave him no credit for having beat them to a number of the items they reported in their story tonight. We feel ya, Howard.

(Hat-tip RAW STORY who had the early scoop on the Times story.)

By Brad Friedman on 1/3/2007 7:19pm PT  


Support The BRAD BLOG
Please visit our advertisers




Spend your advertising dollars wisely! And support the good guys at the same time! or Advertise with the good guys! We're it!












Support The BRAD BLOG
Please visit our advertisers
Brad Friedman's
The BRAD BLOG



Go to front page...

Recent Entries

Archives
Important Docs
Categories

A Few Great Blogs
Political Cartoonists

· Make The BRAD BLOG your Homepage!
· Add The BRAD BLOG to favorites/bookmarks!
· Or syndicate The BRAD BLOG...
BRAD BLOG RSS 2.0 FEED Add to Google Add to My AOL
Add to My Yahoo! Subscribe in NewsGator Online
Follow The BRAD BLOG on Twitter!
Follow The BRAD BLOG on Facebook!

Please Help Support The BRAD BLOG...
One-time
any amount you like...
$
Monthly
any amount you like...
$
Or by Snail Mail
Make check out to...
Brad Friedman
7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594
Los Angeles, CA 90028

The BRAD BLOG receives no foundational or corporate support. Your contributions make it possible to continue our work.
About Brad Friedman...
Brad is an independent investigative
journalist, blogger, broadcaster,
VelvetRevolution.us co-founder,
expert on issues of election integrity,
and a Commonweal Institute Fellow.

Brad has contributed chapters to these books...


...And is featured in these documentary films...

Additional Stuff...
Brad Friedman/The BRAD BLOG Named...
Buzz Flash's 'Wings of Justice' Honoree
Project Censored 2010 Award Recipient
The 2008 Weblog Awards



Wikio - Top of the Blogs - Politics

Other Brad Related Places...


Useful Tools...

Contact the Media

Admin
Brad's Test Area
(Ignore below! It's a test!)

All Content & Design Copyright © Brad Friedman unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Advertiser Privacy Policy
www.BradBlog.com