And Another Certification Bites The Dust

Certification. Its hot news. Today its Colorado. Just check out how much coverage the Colorado’s State Secretary received in declaring three out of four of the state’s digital voting equipment vendors’ products unfit for service, or at least unreliable, and decertifying their use.

Actually the Brad Blog posted this news the earliest from my findings — just minutes after yesterday afternoon’s press conference by the CO Secretary of State around 3:30PM.

Blogging aside, clearly the press (at least) is watching this news like a hawk. I was just writing about the Ohio test results from last week when I saw this come across the wire this morning. I hadn’t a chance or compelling reason to check up on Brad or I would’ve seen this news sooner.

And to be sure, I don’t want to fill bandwidth with rehash of all the news from every precinct on the state of voting equipment. I think we get it. And for news junkies, you can get more here. Its time to focus on solutions. But a couple of quick points…

1. Widespread ImplicationNationally: While the volume of coverage is newsworthy, for me the real news is Secretary Coffman declared that their findings indicate that the federal certification process is inadequate. Rut-roe.

2. The One that Made it… Sorta: Out of fairness, I note that Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) equipment did pass the recertification for “conditional use.” The other three equipment vendors: Hart InterCivic, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software failed recertification under new rules Secretary Coffman announced last March for testing electronic voting machines.

3. There’s No Escape… Yet: I believe it’s well settled that this nation has now gone through two presidential elections where there were legitimate concerns raised on all sides about the integrity of the outcomes. And it’s increasingly clear that we’re going to do it again next year… we simply cannot hope to “fix” these the problems in that time frame.

All that noted, the OSET Institute is absolutely committed to seeing the reinvention of how America votes in a digital democracy within the next 2 presidential election cycles… 2016 …with your help.

GAM|out

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