Monday, October 6, 2008

Concern about voting machine testing

We are up against clueless officials here in Pennsylvania.

At the state level they are apparently saying they can send out a hash to verify software because "no one ever asked for it and we don't have a protocol." At the county level, counties are running some automated L & A tests and think they are doing serious testing.

Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) claims to run Parallel Testing but it's being done in an undisclosed location by an undisclosed "accounting firm" being paid an undisclosed amount to do so. And all these officials seem to think they know more than the national computer experts who have called these machines insecure and poorly-designed.

As they say in Star Wars, pay no attention to that nutball over there.... these voting machines are fiiiiinnnnnne...

Editor's note: A source explained to us that "L & A" and "Parallel Testing" are both methods of testing the machines. L and A is logic and accuracy testing used to test the software and hardware of computer voting machines. During the testing of the electronic voting process, testers cast ballots that mirror the current election from a pre‐determined "matrix". When they finish voting the entire matrices, the tabulations must be a perfect match in order for the equipment to pass the L & A test.