Voting machines won't be retested, state officials say (Florida)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13418976.htm

State elections officials aren't ready to re-examine electronic voting machines -- even after a supervisor reported hackers could rig votes on some machines.

BY MARC CAPUTO
mcaputo@herald.com

TALLAHASSEE - Top computer scientists and voting experts said Thursday that Florida must re-examine the way it tests voting machines and needs to verify claims by a Tallahassee elections official who said hackers could alter some computerized election results. But acting Florida Secretary of State David Mann, whose office oversees the state elections department, said Thursday that he has such ''confidence'' in his agency's certification process that he has no intention of doing any double-checking right now.

At the center of the controversy: Leon County's elections chief, Ion Sancho, a nonpartisan maverick who's determined to avoid the 2000 Florida elections' debacle that led lawmakers to mandate the very computerized voting systems he is now questioning. Over the past six months, Sancho gave two computer hackers access to his optical-scan voting machines, in which voters cast fill-in-the-blank ballots. Attacking different parts of the system from the inside, the hackers said they were able to easily bypass security codes, make losing candidates win, add or subtract voters -- and do it without leaving a trace.

On Tuesday, Sancho officially dumped the voting machine system made by Diebold Elections Systems in favor of another made by Election Systems & Software. ES&S also manufactures Miami-Dade and Broward's ATM-like touch-screen voting machines, which experts say also could be vulnerable to attacks from advanced insider-hackers. A Diebold spokesman said Sancho's test was bogus. Including Monroe, 29 counties use Diebold's touch-screen and opti-scan machines. The reports from the Leon County hackers, especially the most recent from Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, raised red flags in the small world of computer-security and voting experts.

''The most important thing is that these claims not be ignored,'' said Ronald L. Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who's known among colleagues as one of the world's most influential computer cryptographers.

more ...

I really hope to live long enough to see these people run out of office all over the country.
They are not fit to serve. Not one of them.



Has Florida EVER been clean politically?

Repugs. I have this feeling that if a good organized group of people bugged the governor's office about electronic voting enought that he might understand the nonpartisan issue involved(As well as Shriver), we might get some changes in all the machines California's been using for the last couple years.

UPDATE:Espcially if he considers the fact he got his vote lost d/t voting machines...

He has been a strong advocate for election reform here and elsewhere that if the issue was brought up to him, he may be inclined to follow it.

in it (I just watched it last night) where one character said to the other "You couldn't win an election even if your brother was the governor". There was no other context for this comment but the Bushes - it had to be a dig about the (s)elections in Florida, cracked me up. Anybody else catch that?

This story reminded me of it. :shrug:

That surely offended the primary market for that movie--if they got it.

just right to throw all elections to crooked bastard Repubs!

... this guys ass off - I don't think he realizes the liability he's setting up for himself.

:kick:

:shrug:

--State Elections Boards and Secretaries of State are vigorously protecting their turf. Voters' rights is the LAST thing on their minds. This constitutes an entrenched form of corruption and abuse of the public trust in this country.

He's confident of the outcome, in other words.

Background here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

excerpt:
"Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company <where> he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper."

Gov. Bush picks major Republican donor to oversee state elections

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fcobb08dec08,0,4662473.story?coll=sfla-news-florida

By John Kennedy
Tallahassee Bureau
Posted December 8 2005

TALLAHASSEE · Gov. Jeb Bush turned to an old family friend and contributor Wednesday to succeed former Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood as Florida secretary of state.
Sue Cobb, 68, a Coral Gables lawyer who served as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica the past four years, will take over as the state's top elections official in January, Bush said.

...

Cobb and her husband, Chuck Cobb, also are major Republican donors with ties to the Bush family that stretch back almost 20 years.
"It sends a very bad message," Karen Thurman, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said of Cobb's appointment. "She has no experience with elections and her background is with the party. She's a political appointment."

...

Federal records show Chuck Cobb has contributed $130,000 to Republicans over the past three years, including $75,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Sue Cobb gave $2,000 to Republican Mel Martinez in his successful U.S. Senate campaign last year, and $2,000 to the governor's brother, President George W. Bush, for his 2004 re-election.

Cobb acknowledged her GOP ties. But she said they would not shape her decisions in a job that drew worldwide attention with Florida's central role in each of the past two presidential elections.

...

snip


We have to remove all electronic/touchscreen/optiscan/otherwise mechanical voting from this country immediately. Bottom line.

We MUST return to paper and pen voting, hand-counted at the precinct under direct bipartisan observation, and the results phoned into the Secretary of State's office.