More election shenanigans in Sunshine State

[MelissaB]

More election shenanigans in Sunshine State

BY FRED GRIMM
[e-mail]

Not even the toadies on the Florida Public Service Commission would allow their corporate buddies to get away with this.

Customers might give the power companies hell. They might rail about FPL's rotten poles or Progress Energy's substandard maintenance or Gulf Power's tardy service. But power companies don't retaliate against even their fiercest critics. They don't dare. Not even the Public Service Commission abides such behavior.

The Florida Secretary of State's office harbors a different ethic. The guardian of Florida democracy raised not a peep of protest when the only three certified vendors of voting machines retaliated against a critic. Diebold Elections Systems, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Sequoia Voting Systems all refused to sell machines to Leon County's Supervisor of Elections.

EASY TO HACK

Ion Sancho offended the election machine triopoly last year when he brought in computer security experts who demonstrated how an insider could hack Leon's Diebold voting machines, alter the outcome of an election and then wipe out all signs of tampering.
Diebold cut him off like a betrayed lover. ES&S canceled his order for touch-screen machines, claiming that the company was just too busy to supply Leon County. (Oddly, an ES&S official assured Maryland's election administrator in February that the company could outfit the entire state with new machines.)

...snip


This was Sue Cobb's cue to raise hell. This was the time for Jeb Bush's newly appointed secretary of state to grab vendor reps by their ears and inform them that either they serve Florida or they don't.

...snip

SANCHO THREATENED

Instead, Cobb, in an act of corporate cuddling that would embarrass Jack Abramoff, threatened Sancho.

:rofl:

(Read the rest of the article. It's great!

More: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14181959.htm

[Kurovski]

1. Them election box makers sure are powerful.

Gee, I wish I could create faulty, crap-made products and sell 'em to the country with a guarantee I'll get away with it. :eyes:

[nicknameless]

2. Did we ever get to hear what was said in Sancho's meeting with Cobb?

The one where she had reporters barred and threatened?

K&R