Steinbach Contradicted In Federal Report
Iowa’s election director Sandy Steinbach has been contradicted in a report to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The report resulted in the exclusion of Ciber laboratory from its previous role as an independent testing authority(ITA) dealing in voting machines. Ciber has “tested” all of Iowa’s voting machines, according to Steinbach.
In a January 8, 2007 email to me, Steinbach said Ciber was no longer allowed to test voting machines merely because some administrative hurdles had not been cleared. She wrote:
Ciber applied for EAC certification. The reason that the Ciber did not receive EAC certification was the administrative requirements. Ciber’s technical capability is not in question. You can verify this by calling Brian Hancock at the EAC.
But the newly released report says Ciber’s technical capability is in fact the problem. It says Ciber cannot show it follows its own testing protocol and that:
“CIBER has not shown the resources to provide a reliable product. The current quality management plan requires more time to spend on managing the process than they appear to have available and it was clear during the assessment visit that they had not accepted that they have a responsibility to provide quality reviewed reports that show what was done in testing. The ITA Practice Director indicated during the assessment that their difficulties were that corporate CIBER did not allow for the personnel resource time for quality management functions . . . .
Worse than that, the report says Ciber admitted :
. . .that the testing for a product tends to either use vendor developed tests or new tests developed specifically for the product – they have no standard test methods defined. This makes their testing dependent on the vendor input and vulnerable to unique vendor interpretations . . .
In short, the feds now know that the so-called independent testing authorites, who provide a patina of legitimacy for secretive computerized voting machines, are not independent, not doing the testing, and not authorities of any sort. We critics have been saying that for years. Give us ten more points. Score now at 193-0.
The report had not been made public when Steinbach wrote her email. It became public when New York officials threatened to subpoena it.
The most puzzling part of this report is its reporter, Steve Freeman. He once served under Sandy Steinbach when they both dealt with the ITAs for the National Association of State Election Directors(NASED). Why is Freeman criticizing Ciber now after years of accepting their work at face value? Perhaps Steinbach has already explained. In her email she lamented:
Our reviewers spent literally thousands of unpaid hours and accomplished a great improvement in the quality of voting system reliability. . . .Did we have the formidable resources now in the hands of the EAC? No. Given what we had to work with the NASED program accomplished a great deal. It was not perfect. NASED, fully recognizing our own limitations (no budget or paid staff, with voluntary standards that we had to beg for years to have updated, neither the authority nor the resources to go in and audit the labs) worked for many years to gain federal interest in the voting system testing process.
So Ciber was the wizard of Oz, hiding behind a curtain of proprietary secrecy, doing wonderful things for vendors and fooling the NASED volunteers, including Steinbach. I wonder if she feels betrayed.