Clark County's controversial new
electronic voting machines will be certified for
continued use, Secretary of State Dean Heller said this
week. The announcement came after the
Sequoia Pacific AVC Advantage machines were publicly
tested by an out-of-state examiner at the Clark County
Government Center July 12. According
to Fred Dugger, information systems manager for the state
Legislative Counsel Bureau, the examiner, Michael Ian
Shamos, had been recommended by Tom Stown of Henderson,
an active critic of the 1,300 Sequoia Pacific electronic
voting machines purchased by the Clark County Commission.
Dugger,
who described himself as "another pair of
eyeballs" Heller had asked to be present for the
testing, told Electric Nevada that Stown had
endorsed Shamos' independence based upon the examiner's
earlier decertification of some Sequoia Pacific machines
for Pennsylvania elections. In
that case, said Dugger, the operating software had not
been up to the task of managing ballots allowing the
voting of straight party lines. But
Republican Congressional District 2 candidate Pat
McMillan, who has filed suit against
Clark County Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson,
denied that Stown, who was out of town and could not be
reached for comment, had recommended Shamos. McMillan
called the demonstration at the Clark government center
"a farce." "It
was a vender demo sales pitch," he said, contending
that Shamos was not truly independent. "He
admitted he was paid by the county, which was reimbursed
by Sequoia Pacific," said McMillan. "I
figure he got about $8500 for this appearance. He has a
pecuniary interest." Shamos,
an attorney and adjunct faculty member in the School of
Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University, has been
statutory examiner of electronic voting systems for
Pennsylvania since 1980 and serves as the designee of the
Attorney General of Texas at electronic voting
examinations in that state. Fielding
questions from the Government Center audience, he
recommended the Sequoia machines be certified for use in
early voting. "The
machines passed every test that was conducted," said
Shamos, adding that the risk of someone rigging the
machines appeared minimal. "In
my opinion it would be easier to rob Fort Knox," he
said. Stown,
McMillan and about 50 protesters opposed to the
electronic voting machines were present for the
examination of the Sequoia machines, as were
representatives of the manufacturer, Sequoia Pacific
corporation. Nevada
Secretary of State Dean Heller announced Monday his
office "will issue the certificate
immediately." "The
most common complaint voiced is that there is no paper
trail with this system," said Heller. "We now
know that is simply not true. The ballot images can be
printed 
in compliance with state law."
McMillan
has charged in a suit filed against Clark County
Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson that "The
Sequoia machines are devoid of the capability to retain
unalterable evidence of the voter's original intent and
to maintain an image of each complete ballot cast by each
voter."
Rather
than Shamos examining the machines, he told Electric
Nevada, "We were hoping for Wyle Labs, but Wyle
Labs refused to do it because they didn't want them to
look at the source code."
However,
reached by Electric Nevada, a spokesman at the
Huntsville, Alabama testing firm said Wyle Laboratories
had decided to entirely leave the business of testing
election software, though still continue testing election
machine firmware and hardware.
The
reason, said contract manager Ed Smith, is the sheer size
of the software code involved nowadays in managing
electronic voting machines.
"A
company wanted us to do one which was 900,000 lines. I
mean, it was huge. And we sat down, and we were working
on quoting it, and then we said 'Wait a minute,' you
know?"
Normally,
said Smith, a software program that large would be
contracted out by Wyle for review, because "other
people can do the work more efficiently."
But
he said the company decided that "if this is what's
coming down the pike, it doesn't make sense for us to
subcontract it out -- it just costs [the client] more and
we stay in the loop."
So
he said Wyle Labs had informed NASED -- the National
Association of State Election Directors - of its decision
and recommended that the association contract with one of
a number of other companies which specialize in the area
of software code review.
Smith
denied that the political furor accompanying electronic
voting machine software was a factor in Wyle's decision
to drop out of that business.
The
legal suit against
Clark County Registrar Kathryn Ferguson filed by Pat
McMillan charges her with a number of unlawful actions
involving her efforts to install the Sequoia AVC
Advantage Model D electronic voting machines. It also
charges her with numerous other election violations under
Nevada law.
Clark
County's machines were certified for use at regular
elections in 1993 by then-Secretary of State Cheryl Lau
in an action that was itself controversial. The devices
had cost the county $6.8 million.
A 1993 paper by Dr. Shamos, proposing a method of
evaluating security measures for countering threats to
computerized election systems, is posted on the Web and
available at
Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat.