June 19, 2006
As evidenced by the recent tiff between former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and former Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore over their recollections of the 2000 presidential recount, state officials and county elections chiefs don't always see eye to eye.
But Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson and many of his colleagues support a proposal by the Florida Division of Elections to give the state a greater role in the testing of county voting equipment.
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Critics say the proposed rule is merely an attempt to squelch the kind of embarrassment that occurred last year when maverick Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho quietly invited computer scientists to hack into his county's state-certified system. The hackers found that a person with insider access could manipulate vote totals without leaving evidence of tampering, Sancho said.
"At every point along this process, as evidence begins to mount that these systems have problems, the secretary of state has sought to hide that information from the public," Sancho said.
Anderson and other elections chiefs, however, say the state's proposal will lead to more information being shared among counties and will add consistency across Florida's 67 counties.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbccentral/content/local_news/epaper/2006/06/19/s1b_elex_0619.html