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VotePA STATEMENT ON ALLEGHENY
COUNTY SOFTWARE VERIFICATION TESTING
Yesterday afternoon, Allegheny
County announced that it had tested and verified the firmware
on a random sample of eighteen of its ES&S iVotronic voting
machines. The tests were said to be conducted at the County's
elections warehouse on Saturday and Monday under the supervision
of County Election officials following protocols developed in
conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of State. The County
said the actual testing was done by SysTest Labs, which is the
private consulting firm that performed the original testing of
the iVotronic to the 2002 "federal" standards, allowing
its current certification in Pennsylvania and other states.
While VotePA commends officials
in Allegheny County and at the Pennsylvania Department of State
for making this effort to help assure that voting equipment is
prepared to accurately record votes in this historic election,
we believe these tests were limited and flawed by several problems
with the way they were performed.
First and foremost, all testing
of voting equipment should be done publicly, but the public was
never informed of Allegheny County's software testing or permitted
to observe it in any way. This is wrong. Citizens have a right
to see and follow the process of how our elections are run. Tests
of voting machines that are done in secret as these were, with
citizens having no knowledge or opportunity to observe, simply
do not inspire public confidence in the electoral process. At
worst secret testing may even undermine the public's trust in
election results.
The Pennsylvania Election Code
clearly provides avenues for members of the public to observe
the operation of our elections. We call on all officials to follow
the letter, intent, and spirit of these laws at all times and
through all steps of the electoral process. The public must be
able to follow and observe testing and preparation of voting
systems including not only software verification, but also parallel
testing, certification testing, and any other testing that is
done at the county or state level. A videotape made available
after the fact is simply not acceptable, because it is not enough.
Elections belong to the people, and the people must be able to
observe their elections while they are being prepared and conducted.
Second, although VotePA recognizes
the time constraints placed on the Allegheny County by the impending
election, we note that a token test of eighteen machines out
of approximately 4700 units simply does not support a blanket
statement that all of the county's machines are safe and running
correct software. This small number of tested machines allows
us to surmise at best that some (but not necessarily all)
of Allegheny County's voting machines are running the certified
version of software, assuming of course that these tests were
performed correctly. In the future we look forward to a true
statistically significant sample being tested adequately and
publicly in advance of Election Day, so that greater confidence
can be had in the security of the entire population of the county's
voting machines.
Finally, VotePA strongly suggests
that protocols be developed and training instituted so that sworn
County employees can conduct future testing of voting machines.
We urge all counties to distance our electoral process from private,
for-profit vendors whenever possible. It does not inspire confidence
when the exact same private company that tested and passed the
iVotronic voting machine and its software through "federal"
ITA testing (with the tests paid for by the machine's vendor)
are now the ones telling us that everything is fine in Allegheny
County.
All counties that continue
to use of software-dependent voting machines must take strong
steps to verify that their machines are running only certified
versions of software. This is important because absent any independent
means such as a voter-verified paper ballot to confirm their
choices, the public is forced to completely trust this software
to record and count every vote. VotePA appreciates the fact that
Allegheny County did try to respond to citizen requests for software
verification, and once again we commend them for making an effort.
But we view the limited tests conducted over the weekend as only
a tiny first step, and we look forward to improvements that will
lead to a better, more public testing process for future elections.
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