Ohio holds on voting machine purchase (SAIC to also test)

By William Welsh
Staff Writer

The state of Ohio is delaying its $136-million purchase of new voting equipment and services until it can complete further security reviews and audits of electronic voting devices, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell announced today. The state planned to announce qualified vendors, terms of service and warranty today, but security issues, as well as a court action on behalf of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. of Oakland, Calif., prohibited the release of the successful bidders, Blackwell said.

“Our initial inquiries into security issues regarding e-voting devices leaves some unanswered questions,” Blackwell said. “As a result, we will put these voting devices through an extensive security assessment and validation process.”

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego and InfoSentry Services Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., will conduct the security assessments and testing, he said.

Ohio joins Maryland in delaying its purchase of new voting equipment until it can further study security issues. The equipment is to help the states comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which requires states to modernize voting equipment and improve election administration.

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/21496-1.html

Election Systems Consulting

Now that the Help America Vote Act is Federal Law, there are new vendors in the elections market. They are looking around for their most senior staff member who has voted recently--in hopes of making that person in charge of their new Elections System Division. And many vendors who have installed local voter registration systems are looking about for partners with large network experience to help install much larger and more complex statewide networks.

While InfoSENTRY sells neither hardware nor software, our project team members have worked on statewide and local election systems projects throughout the country. We have been involved in successfully implementing election management systems in counties and much larger, complex statewide voter registration systems for Chief State Election Officials. Our projects for election officials have included:

Needs assessments and requirements analysis for statewide information technology projects
Strategic election system plan development and implementation
Voter registration system and vote tabulation system project management and project recovery
Voter registration system and vote tabulation system contract negotiation and contract management
Independent quality assurance reviews for voter registration system implementation projects
User acceptance testing: voter registration systems
User acceptance testing: vote tabulation systems
System security planning and management
Disaster recovery planning and management
In working for our state and local election clients, we offer the following advantages:

Nationwide election systems project experience
Independence from hardware and software vendors
Documented project quality management practices
Certified IT professionals managing every project
Services designed to fit your project requirements
Use of our HAVA-Project(tm) toolkit to help manage HAVA-related project activities and documentation

more...

http://www.infosentry.com/Election_Systems_Consulting.htm

No word on their board of directors to be found with a quick glance, but you never know. Definately worth looking into as we know to be skeptical of SAIC already.

M. Glenn Newkirk: president

Erich Pearson: software engineer, has worked with a international chemical manufacture business in the past.

Helen Sims: Director of Systems Available Services, was in global tele communications business prior to InfoSentry.

That is all I have found, I will keep looking and digging.

On edit:

Add to the list Jennifer Helget

Harvard Policy Group Report "2000 elections and beyond"

One of the White papers on the site talks of Enron. It says either somebody in the QA department was incompetant,or was very unethical to let the Enron thing go with out pointing it out earlier. It also has a paper about the HAVA law. It says that states regardless of opinion of HAVA need to "get over it". HAVA is the law, now deal with it.

We have GOT to get info about SAIC out. I need to go look up that thread where so much negative info was posted a week or so ago.

Eloriel

You include the fact that SAIC is tied into every major university computer science department. And has so many subsidiaries and employees, past and present, that virtually any organisation involving computers is going to have strong ties to it.

Or, better yet, Columbus.

Need to get in touch with their Sec'y of State or whoever is in charge of the voting machines there. Here is the list of points I discussed with a voting official (Amy Anaccarato, I think, but not sure) in Utah:

DRE vs. optical scan
------------------------------
- There is no voter-verified paper trail with DRE
- DRE will result in lowered confidence of the Utah election process among constituents
- There is a high cost to dozens of DRE machines in each precinct, vs. low cost of just ONE optical scan machine in each precinct (coupled with paper ballots)
- Requirements for the disabled (per HAVA) can be met with one touch-screen machine per precinct when used to assist in the generation of a paper ballot
- To verify their ballot, blind voters can use the ballot-to-speech capability (by first scanning the paper ballot) which is being developed by some manufacturers
- Systems such as these which are used to assist disabled voters are readily compatible with a paper-ballot/optical-scan voting system
- Security of a paper-ballot-based voting system is low tech and understandable by everyone: multiple eyes, locked ballot boxes, and basic accounting.
- There is a high cost to maintaining and replacing broken DRE machines
- There is a high cost to setting up a full-fledged NETWORK of DRE machines in each precinct every time there is an election. Need to hire $$$/hour IT guys to do it. HAVA does not provide this money, to my knowledge.
- There is a high cost to training election workers in the new DRE machines
- Implications of DRE machine failure (if it is properly detected, and it certainly may not be) is significantly more dire than that of any possible failure in optical scan voting system
- Be wary of voting system manufacturers. They are in the business of selling systems and making money. They can't make very much money selling you just one optical-scan machine per precinct. But you can certainly save a lot of money!
- You should expect that demonstrations of DRE election systems, whether in a real election or not, will go smoothly. Any manufacturer committed to making a sale will staff these demonstrations by knowledgeable contractors and/or employees. This is staff that you will not be able to afford in any state-wide implementation.