Roll Call: Unlike Ballots, EAC Shouldn’t Be Secretive

[Wilms]

Aaron Burstein and I wrote an op-ed in Roll Call that runs today. We describe how a recent case of secrecy at the Election Assistance Commission, involving its de-accreditation of testing lab Ciber, is actually the tip of a secrecy iceberg. We go on to explain the implications of the Ciber misstep and how secrecy mostly works against voting system oversight.

Roll Call: "Unlike Ballots, EAC Shouldn’t Be Secretive"

By Aaron Burstein and Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Special to Roll Call

January 22, 2007

The Election Assistance Commission has some explaining to do. The secrecy that pervades the EAC, which oversees testing and certification of voting systems, holds dire consequences for our electoral system. Both chambers of Congress need to work to dispel this culture of secrecy.

snip

Secrecy is pervasive in voting system development and testing. As one test lab representative testified before the EAC in October, their procedures must be kept secret because their clients — voting system vendors — require confidentiality and “own” the test results. Though this secrecy might protect some proprietary information, or prevent embarrassing information from coming to light, it is inimical to proper oversight of the election system.

Last month, when the EAC adopted its new testing and certification policy, it left the major elements of voting system testing secrecy in place. For example, the EAC’s new policy will continue to allow voting system manufacturers to select, pay and communicate confidentially with test labs, thus diminishing the labs’ independence. Under its new rules, the EAC will not receive manufacturers’ technical data packages, which are documents crucial to understanding a voting system. It is unclear why this rule exists, aside from the likelihood that it places these data beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

In addition, the EAC failed to ensure that election officials, as well as the public, can assess the sufficiency of the test labs’ work. Under its new policy, the EAC will publish test labs’ reports about systems that gain certification. The EAC, however, will not publish the details about what a lab did to test a system, the so-called test plan. Keeping the test plan secret will make it difficult for anyone other than the EAC, the labs and the vendors to judge the conclusions presented in the report. As the experience with Ciber shows, knowing how a test lab evaluates a voting system is just as important as knowing what conclusions the lab reaches.

snip

http://josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2007/01/22/rollcall_eac

[Stevepol]

1. Secrecy :: democracy = antonyms

[OnTheOtherHand]

2. a refreshing cuppa Joe n/t

[Land Shark]

3. Bad title "Secretive Ballots" but authors usually don't control the title

the anti-secrecy principles certainly apply to ballots too, - the counting of them.

[Wilms]

4. He was referring to secret ballots, of course. But I hear ya. n/t