US Election Watchdog Finds Untested Scanner Listed in Federal Voting-System Certification

The United States Election Assistance Commission's inspector general has identified a mistake in the federal certification record for Democracy Suite 5.20: the document listed a scanner that the voting-system laboratory had not tested. The interim finding, issued on October 22, concerns the accuracy of official equipment documentation, not an allegation that an election result was changed.

The inspector general's review, report P26HQ0007-27-01, found that a component from an earlier equipment list was included in the certified configuration. It recommended correcting the certificate and associated public records to reflect the equipment actually examined. The review is interim; a broader inquiry into physical configuration audits remains unfinished.

The EAC's public system page identifies Pro V&V as the testing laboratory and February 4, 2025 as the certification date. It identifies the original manufacturer as Dominion Voting Systems, since acquired by Liberty Vote USA. The certification remains listed on the agency's equipment page.

Independent examination by the Yellow Jacket Initiative identifies the erroneously listed component as a PCOS-321C scanner. It reports that the watchdog found no evidence the scanner was sold to jurisdictions as part of this certified configuration. The manufacturer's records showed its last sale to a jurisdiction was in September 2022, before the certification date. On that evidence, the inspector general described the discrepancy's practical impact as limited.

The EAC accepted the recommendation, with an October 26, 2026 target for correcting the paperwork, according to the inspector general's report as examined by Yellow Jacket. That deadline is not itself evidence of completion. The EAC also undertook to compare the full certified configuration with the components tested and address the laboratory's document-reconciliation process.

The distinction matters for public oversight. A certification is supposed to describe the specific hardware and software that passed testing. A wrongly listed component undermines that documentary assurance even if the component never reached an election office. The public can evaluate the corrective action by examining the revised certificate and the inspector general's eventual closure of its recommendation.

Neither the interim report nor the supporting records establish that this scanner was deployed under the certificate, that vote totals were affected, or that the error was intentional. Those are separate propositions for which this review supplies no evidence. The finding supports correcting certification controls, not claims of election manipulation.