Reply #7: Aren't any.

[hedda_foil]

There's a recommendation that the states use the certification of the National Association of State Election Directors ... a certification which is at best useless, and appears to be paid for by the vendors!

http://www.votefraud.org/hacked_by_author_Bev_Harris.htm

WHO TESTS AND CERTIFIES THESE SYSTEMS?

The story gets a bit odder here. An unelected person named R. Doug Lewis runs a private non-profit organization called "The Election Center." Lewis is possibly the most powerful man in the U.S., influencing election procedures and voting systems, yet he is vague about his credentials and no one seems to be quite sure who hired him or how he came to oversee such vast electoral functions. Lewis organized the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS, now heavily funded by voting machine vendors); he also organized the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and, through them, Lewis told Harris he helps certify the certifiers.

Wyle Laboratories is the most talked-about voting machine certifier, probably because it is the biggest, but in fact, Wyle quit certifying voting machine software in 1996. It does test hardware: Can you drop it off a truck? Does it stand up to rain?

Software testing and certification is done by Shawn Southworth. When Ciber quit certifying in 1996, it was taken over by Nichols Research, and Southworth was in charge of testing. Nichols Research stopped doing the testing, and it was taken over by PSInet, where Southworth did the testing. PSInet went under, and testing functions were taken over by Metamore, where Southworth did the testing. Metamore dumped it, and it was taken over by Ciber, where Southworth does the testing.

This is Shawn Southworth.

What are Shawn Southworth's credentials? We are not allowed to ask. The rules are set by R. Doug Lewis of The Election Center, which states that the certifiers will not answer questions from the media, or from anyone else.

According to Dr. David Dill of Stanford, formal questions were posed to Wyle and Ciber about what is done to test these machines, but both declined to answer.

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