Company's Vote Machine Test Questioned

Ciber Inc., of Greenwood Village, Colo., was told to stop testing machines after a federal assessor found the company had failed to follow proper procedures and could not show that it had conducted all the required tests, said Donetta Davidson, chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

Ciber was told last August by the commission to cease testing, but the order was not made public until it was reported Thursday by The New York Times.

Federal assessors "found some anomalies that they thought needed to be improved," Davidson said. "They (Ciber) were told they could not provide any certification in our interim program until these issues were corrected."

Ciber is one of the nation's top three companies that test electronic voting machines, and the No. 1 tester of voting machine software.