Reply #3: FL: Hearing slated to limit voting device checks

[rumpel]

The News-Press

Latest News - Posted 11:37 A.m.

By Brent Kallestad
associated Press
Originally posted on June 11, 2006

TALLAHASSEE- A proposed rule change that would prohibit counties from testing their voting equipment without state approval will be argued Monday, a measure that could create some discomfort among Florida's independently elected elections supervisors.

One of the more outspoken of Florida's 67 supervisors, Leon County's Ion Sancho, conducted a test last year where elections office workers hacked into a Diebold optical-scan voting system in an effort to show that it could be made to produce false results.

And it turned out, Sancho's experiment exposed problems that prompted the state as well as California to develop better security safeguards.

But now state officials want more influence in any future tests on voting equipment, hoping to require the supervisors to submit a plan to the Division of Elections and notify the manufacturer beforehand.

"Hutzpah is the word that comes to mind," Sancho said Friday. "The state should not be so concerned about protecting the voting companies from embarrassment when their equipment has security vulnerabilities."

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060611/NEWS01/60611009/1075