In an interview with WISH-TV, Bill Carson, of Carson Manufacturing, which manufactures MicroVote voting machines, discusses testing and certification:
(Picks up electrical cord.) UL says that this will not shock you and it will not catch fire. They don’t tell you that it actually works. That’s beyond the scope of UL testing. Absolutely nothing will you see in the FEC requirements that this (puts hand on DRE voting machine) has to work. It has to have these functions. But it doesn’t have to work.
... Well, because of identity or lack of identity with records, there's really no way that I could prove to a voter, post tally, that their vote exactly counted the way that they voted it.
Excerpts from Interviews with MicroVote Executives. WISH-TV. An I-Team 8 Investigation.
Unfortunately the ITA (independent testing authority) has a limited scope in what they can test and check on the system. It is based on time and economics. For an independent test authority to absolutely, thoroughly test under all possible conditions that the device will operate properly they would have to spend, in my estimation, 10 times the amount of time and money as it took to develop it in the first place…. And the technology changes so rapidly, by the time they get done testing it, it’s obsolete.
James M. Ries Jr., President of MicroVote, comments further:
The states basically look at the federal qualification testing as being kind of the ultimate testing ground. As a vendor working with these independent testing authorities, they do a good job of following the test plans afforded to them by the vendors. They don't really go outside of those test plans.