The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in its role as a scientific adviser to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), said that the labs of iBeta Quality Assurance in Aurora, Colo., and SysTest Labs LLC in Denver meet the technical requirements of the latest federal testing guidelines.
A decision on final accreditation will come after the EAC conducts a nontechnical evaluation of the companies, including reviews of their conflict-of-interest policies, organizational structures and record-keeping procedures, said an EAC spokeswoman.
The agency has not set a timetable for finishing its part of the certification process, the spokeswoman said. However, she added, "completing this process in a timely fashion is a top priority."
Carolyn Coggins, quality assurance director for voting at iBeta, said her company expects to learn the next step in the process in a letter the EAC should be sending out during the next couple of weeks.
A moving target
Coggins did note that the guidelines are a moving target. The EAC is already re-evaluating the 2005 standards, and new criteria will likely be released later this year, she said.
The EAC is tasked with creating a framework to help states comply with the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed in 2002 to improve federal, state and local voting processes. The law directed states to replace manual voting systems with electronic ones and tasked the EAC with developing a national program for the testing, certification and decertification of e-voting machines.
The EAC does not require that states use only e-voting machines that it certifies. However, some states, including New York, do mandate that all machines be certified by the agency.
The NIST approval of the iBeta and SysTest processes, announced on Jan. 18, is the latest milestone in a process that has been mostly in a state of flux since the EAC's creation in 2002.
Before that, accrediting test labs and certifying voting machines was done on a voluntary basis by the National Association of State Election Directors, using guidelines issued by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which oversees election laws.
Shifting responsibility
The FEC issued its final guidelines in 2002, just before the EAC took over that responsibility.
The EAC issued its first set of guidelines in 2005, the EAC spokeswoman said. The two labs NIST approved this month were audited under both the 2002 and the 2005 guidelines, she said.
The EAC already offers an interim accreditation to testing labs whose operations were approved by the voluntary group under its 2002 guidelines but have yet to gain approval for meeting 2005 specifications. The interim certification is valid only through 2008.
SysTest and Wyle Laboratories Inc. in Huntsville, Ala., earned interim EAC accreditation in August 2006, the spokeswoman said. A third testing firm, Ciber Inc. in Greenwood Village, Colo., has been evaluated but has yet to gain the commission's approval, she said.
Despite the progress, some e-voting experts still consider the testing process to be flawed. Michael Shamos, a professor who specializes in e-voting issues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, believes that the entire system of testing and certifying e-voting machines must be redrawn. He contended that inaction by the election agency will cause a loss of confidence in the voting system.
He also said that the entire machine design, implementation, certification and testing process must be completely transparent, and that the federal government must mandate adherence to EAC guidelines.