Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04voting.html?ei=5065&en=102410cf28381a6c&ex=1168578000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01 /04/washington/04voting.html?ei=5065&en=102410cf28381a6c&ex=1168578000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print</a> >>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 New York State 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 longstanding 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. 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 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. Professor Rubin said that although some software bugs had shown up quickly, in other instances “you might have to use the systems for a while before something happens.â€<<
Originally Posted By ecdc You know, DB, we all give you crap over your links without posting comments, but this is one issue I hope you keep bringing up. We all tune in for election results in November and seem to take for granted that what we're hearing is reality. First, we have no way of proving that it is. Second, Americans seem to have no idea how easy it is to cheat the system. We seem to think that, hey, it's an election! It's really, really important. Therefore, it must be really, really accurate and really hard to cheat. So not true. It reminds me of how I felt right after 9/11. I guess I'd seen too many movies; it seemed so obvious that there was just no way anyone could attack the Pentagon. Surely there were guys ready with rocket launchers, F-15s circling the nation's capitol around the clock. Jack Bauer-esque people must be protecting us. The worst mistake Americans can make is to think that vote counting is somehow protected, somehow infallible, just like the Pentagon. Not only is it vulnerable, it's shocking just how vulnerable.
