Nick Confessore reports in the New York Times on Friday that
New York State elections officials said on Thursday that they would consider suspending the testing of new voting machines in the state, after learning that the laboratory hired to perform the tests was temporarily barred by federal authorities last summer from accrediting new state voting systems.
State officials expressed dismay and shock at Ciber's problems with federal authorities, lending support to our theory that bad news for Ciber may be good news for New York officials who were afraid they might cost the state millions of dollars for failing to meet yet another federal deadline to purchase new voting machines:
“If we had known that, and if we had seen the report from them, we would have known why they were decertified, and maybe we wouldn’t have hired them to begin with, or maybe we would have made some remedial changes,” said Lee K. Daghlian, a spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections.
Mr. Daghlian said the board had requested a copy of a report prepared by the federal commission and would review it before making a final decision.
“It may not delay use of the new machines,” he said. “If this report comes in and it’s something really bad that we didn’t know about, we may have to start all over again.”
And if they have to start all over again because federal authorities didn't warn them of Ciber's problems -- well, certainly the Department of Justice and the Federal courts can't blame them.
Categories: General, Voting
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