FL: Ion Sancho Initiates Legal Proceedings Against Diebold

[Wilms]

Shelley supporters: take note of the bolded text.

Florida: Ion Sancho Fights Back

By Susan Pynchon, Florida Fair Elections Coalition

March 08, 2006

Ion Sancho, besieged Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Florida, initiated legal proceedings today against Diebold Election Systems for breach of contract. The lawyer bringing the action is Lida Rodriguez Taseff, an attorney with Duane Morris in Miami. Lida is also the Chair of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.

Diebold has refused to return phone calls to Leon County election staff, refused to honor its existing contract with Leon County for maintenance and upgrades of its voting system, and further refused to sell Leon County touch-screen voting machines to meet state and federal requirements for disabled acessbility.

At a Leon County Commission meeting on February 28, 2006, county staff revealed that Chuck Owen, Division Counsel for Diebold Election Systems, met with county staff behind closed doors on February 27. According to staff, Owen stated that Diebold would sell its touch-screen voting machines to the county if, and only if, the county removed Supervisor Sancho from office.

There are only three companies that have state-certified voting systems in Florida: Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia. All three vendors have refused to sell disabled-accessible voting systems to Leon County, quite apparently in retribution for the series of "red team" security tests authorized by Sancho in 2005 to determine if there were security vulnerabilities in the Diebold voting system used in Leon County. Tests conducted in the spring of 2005 by Florida computer scientist Dr. Herbert Thompson determined that the voting system password could be bypassed, thus permitting unauthorized manipulation of election data. A test on December 13, 2005, now commonly known as the "Hursti hack," definitively proved that election results could be altered without detection using only a memory card. The security vulnerabilities exposed in the Leon County tests have since been confirmed in an independent test conducted by a team of computer scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and California's Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board. The California tests, while not a thorough examination of the Diebold system, revealed numerous additional security flaws in addition to confirming the tests conducted in Leon County.

snip

At Leon County Commission meetings on February 14 and February 28, the two Republican members of Leon County's seven-member county commission blasted Sancho for failing to provide Leon County with accessible voting machines in attacks that Sancho believes are politically motivated. The commission meetings may be viewed here. http://www.co.leon.fl.us/ADMIN/Agenda/realmeetings.asp

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1015&Itemid=113

[tsuki]

1. Florida is a mess. n/t

[LisaM]

2. I wish Ion Sancho were the Florida Secretary of State

He is definitely one of the good guys.

[lyonn]

3. So Diebold will allow their machine in Leon Co. if

Leon Co. gets rid of the person (Sancho) that wants proper inspections of the machines. Should be a given that the machines have proper oversight - all over the U.S.

[Amaryllis]

4. Wilms, can you say more about this statement you made:

"Shelley supporters: take note of the bolded text." What are you suggesting? That perhaps Diebold told CA the same thing? That they'd only sell Diebold in CA if Shelley were removed?

[Wilms]

5. Quite perhapsly.

Shelley supporters are so linked-challenged, I feel they need to have this in their file.

The statement in the article is hearsay, but a bookmarking candidate nonetheless.

[RethugAssKicker]

6. This outcome is critical

If the court sides with Sancho, we can use this for further actions, and bring that fucking Dieshit company down!

[Amaryllis]

7. depends on if it's a court that is in BushCo's pocket or not. Let's hope

it doesn't end up going to the SCOTUS. Don't like to think about how Alito would rule.

[texpatriot2004]

8. This is good news nm