Quote (EndlessSky @ Mar 23 2021 10:03am)
Texas rejected the dominion machines for being prone to tamper. Im surprised Powell isnt talking with them. Or maybe Texas just doesnt want to bother.
https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/forms/sysexam/oct2019-mechler.pdf"prone to error, and troubleshooting and installation overly complex" is more accurate.
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2.1 Observations
The use of most of the EMS software components was not directly observed by examiners during the
mock election and free-form portion of the exam. The following subsections will cover the installation
process and components which were directly observed or responsible for issues during the exam.
2.1.1 Installation
Examiners witnessed Dominion personnel install the server and client software components. The
installation process is very complex and requires the manual entry of certain paths and host names.
Dominion provides a custom installation helper application which allows the user to navigate to and
launch installers for individual components. Those components are not necessarily presented in order
within the installation helper application. There is a point during the install process where the user must
divert from using Dominion’s custom installer to install certain 3rd party prerequisites from DVD. Users
must take great care to follow the exact installation instructions provided by Dominion. Though
hyperlinks are provided in the documentation to help the user navigate from one step to the next,
instructions are not presented in order within the documentation and, in fact, are spread across multiple
documents.
A problem was encountered during the installation of Adjudication Services on the server. The only
way to resolve this issue was to wipe the server clean with a fresh installation of the operating system
(as well as all of the prerequisites up to that point). According to Dominion personnel, the server
hardware should have been rebooted prior to installing Adjudication services. As a result of missing
that step, the installation of the EMS was delayed by hours.
2.1.2 Election Event Designer (EED)
The Secretary of State’s office provided Dominion with election data for the mock election portion of
the exam. Prior to the exam, Dominion used EED to create paper ballots as well as election definitions
for the ICC, ICP, and ICX. The election definition for the ICX includes the touchscreen representation
of the ballot.
Aside from the misspelling of one candidate’s name, there were no issues with the paper ballot.
However, the touchscreen ballot had multiple errors beyond the simple spelling mistake. Party
affiliations were not listed next to candidate’s names, voting instructions specific to each contest were
missing, and ballot proposition language was missing. In addition, the wording of the instruction on the
final screen of the ballot instructed the voter to “cast” their ballot instead of printing it. Note that this
was one of the very small number of changes that was supposed to have been picked up in this revision
of D-Suite.
When asked, Dominion stated that this election definition had been put through an internal logic and
accuracy (L&A) test prior to the exam. Yet none of these issues were caught.
After the mock election portion of the exam, Dominion personnel created a new election definition to
show that they could fix all of the errors and misconfigurations, and it appeared that they did.
Similar to the install process, it appears that EED is overly complex and fragile. Many troubling
questions come to mind. If Dominion personnel, theoretically the most expert users of this software,
can create an election definition with so many glaring errors, how error-prone will the system be for
jurisdictions that opt o create their own election definitions? What level of service will jurisdictions
receive if they outsource the creation of election definitions to Dominion? One would assume that a
certification exam sets the benchmark for the quality of service vendors provide to jurisdictions.
2.1.3 Adjudication
Examiners adjudicated hand marked ballots scanned on the ImageCast Central. The Adjudication user
interface displays the scanned ballot image and highlights the machine interpretation of voter intent in
green (see Figure 1). These green bars were occasionally offset from where the chosen candidates
appeared on the ballot creating a confusing and frustrating user experience (see Figure 2). The
highlighting feature can be disabled should users find it to be counterproductive.
In the January exam of D-Suite 5.5, examiners witnessed a crash of Adjudication Services due
ostensibly to a misconfigured path. The crash of Adjudication Services required the readjudication of
all previously adjudicated ballots. This issue did not occur during the exam of D-Suite 5.5-A. However,
since there were no changes made to the Adjudication software, this issue could arise again.
Figure 1: Properly Aligned Visual Aid
3
Figure 2: Misaligned Visual Aid
2.1.4 Results Tally and Reporting (RTR)
RTR was used to tally votes and produce reports from the mock election. No issues were observed.
Votes were tallied and reported accurately.
their issue seems to be with an internal logic test that messed up party affiliations in their mock election, as well as a typo. also that machines were difficult to install and fix. also a potential firewall issue that i cant say is legit or not, but also the responsibility of the state election officer to ensure, that being that FW installations are in line with each other.
in any case, its public record, so she doesnt need to call Texas for the info.