In 2002 HAVA forced us to vote on these nightmarish machines which breakdown with remarkable frequency. The number of "glitches" (putting aside that “glitches” has an innocence that “glitches which predominantly favor one party” lacks) have been documented (at least the tip of the iceberg) see E-Voting Failures –Election Problem Log at http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp. Given how many breakdowns, malfunctions, lost votes, miscounts, etc. there have been it makes you wonder how such shoddy, dysfunctional machines could get passed those who are responsible for testing and certifying these machines entrusted with our votes.
Turns out, no one is really testing or certifying these machines! The certification process which has certified all of the voting systems Americans vote on today is effectively non-existent. One giant fraud on democracy (that would be us). Here’s where Doug Lewis comes in.
The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) was responsible for managing the qualification, testing and approval of voting equipment in America through "independent testing authorities" (ITAs). These so called independent testing centers are not really independent at allBthey are funded by voting machine vendors to whom they issue their testing reports. The three labs which had been testing all the electronic voting machines in America are selected and paid for by the voting machines companies themselves!
R. Doug Lewis served as the director of the Voting Systems Program for NASED until 2004. Mr. Lewis is also the Executive Director of the Election Center, a private, Anon-profit organization that serves the elections and voter registration profession@ by sponsoring training and certification programs for election administrators and vendors. The Election Center selected the companies to certify the voting machines. All requests regarding testing and certification were channeled from the ITAs to one R. Doug Lewis. Who is R. Doug Lewis? Just like the certification requirements, or the way votes are now counted in America, it's a big secret.
New Yorkers for Verified Voting reports that prior to taking over the Election Center in 1994, Lewis was president and director of Micro Trade Mart, a company that traded in used computer parts. What else do we know about Doug Lewis? Well in 2003 he set up a lobbying meeting for voting machine vendors. The lobbying firm, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) wanted to help Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S and a few lesser voting machine vendors get the public to accept their "product". As Bev Harris, wondering who is R. Doug Lewis, wrote in her book, Black Box Voting : "Perhaps colluding with for-profit companies and helping them hire a lobbying firm is in the spirit of this organization's charter Band since we aren't quite sure who set up [The Election Center], how it gets all its funding or who exactly appointed R. Doug Lewis, his murky relationship with vendors and lobbyist might be exactly what they had in mind."
Black Box Voting publisher David Allen managed to slip into a teleconference with the lobbyist and the vendors. He reports that Lewis was indeed helpful at that particular meeting suggesting that ITAA draft a legal brief to address possible antitrust ramifications as a result of this collusion among industry sources.
Lewis has been a strong advocate of paperless DREs. He is also opposed to anyone's actually monitoring or auditing or being able to observe the regular failure of these machines. Giving Doug Lewis the benefit of the doubt, he has great faith in DREs (look at his testimony). Having such faith, he wouldn’t really need to do testing and certifying. But judging these machines from a more critical perspective, they and Doug Lewis, who has been responsible for their testing and certification, have done an abysmal job. So it’s understandable that Doug Lewis would be opposed to any scrutiny in the Holt Bill.
Since R. Doug Lewis's bio is a big secret, perhaps we could gain some insight from looking at some of Doug's buddies. There's Thomas Wilkey, Executive Director of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) and Donetta Davidson, the current Chair of the EAC. These friends go way back. Davidson and Wilkey both served together on the board of The Election Center, headed by Doug. The Bradblog notes, "Lewis, a key player in test lab secrecy, mentored Davidson and Wilkey as they gained control of the ITA testing infrastructure". http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4144
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