Volusia to decide future of its system

By JAMES MILLER    Daytona News-Journal   December 16, 2005

DELAND Volusia County Council members are almost sure to get an earful today about the reported hack into the Leon County voting system.

For years, Leon and Volusia counties have used the same Diebold Election Systems equipment.

And company representatives are scheduled to be in DeLand today when the County Council considers whether to ditch their system and go with another.

"We've talked to Diebold about it," Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall said Thursday. "If it comes up, they're ready for it."

And it will come up, said local paper-ballot activist Susan Pynchon, who attended the test in Tallahassee on Tuesday.

"My recurring, recurring message is that we have to have paper ballots to have a verifiable election," she said, "and this test in Leon County proves that."

In a public hearing today at 9 a.m., the County Council will consider options for making the county's voting system accessible to disabled voters.

So far, only touch-screen machines, which have audio capabilities to assist blind voters, have been approved for that purpose. Those machines do not have paper ballots, which can be used in a recount to verify election results, although the county's other Diebold machines use paper ballots.

Under a deadline to meet federal accessibility requirements, McFall wants to keep the current system and buy touch-screens for voters who are disabled from Diebold for $780,000.

County Chairman Frank Bruno has a different solution.

He wants to replace the county's current system with a similar paper-ballot system from Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software for $2.6 million.

Election Systems & Software is trying to get the state to certify a touch-screen voting machine for disabled people, AutoMARK, that has a paper ballot and would be the first approved for use in Florida.

In the proposed deal, the company must get state certification for the device by Feb. 22. If it doesn't, the county has until March 3 to buy disabled-accessible touch-screens from the company or terminate the entire contract, according to Assistant County Attorney Rick Karl.

The Leon County Commission gave that county's supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho, the go-ahead on a similar deal Tuesday before the test. Sancho brought in two computer experts who showed an insider could hack into the Diebold system and leave without a trace, he said.

Without similar testing, it's unknown whether other state-certified systems have similar vulnerabilities, Sancho said. But at least the Election Systems & Software proposal offers paper ballots for all voters, he said.

Sancho said in his test scenario, the hacking could only be an "insider job."

Sancho speculated that could explain what happened in Volusia County in 2000 when Al Gore briefly "lost" 16,000 votes. The error came in a DeLand precinct, where the electronic ballot-counting machine registered wildly fluctuating numbers. Those incorrect results subtracted 16,022 votes from Gore, awarded Bush 8,642 votes he didn't have and Socialist Workers Party candidate James Harris almost 10,000 votes.

The incident is "something that has never been investigated fully by federal or state authorities," Sancho said.

Former Volusia County elections chief Deanie Lowe, in charge at the time, bristled at the suggestion. The error, rooted in a faulty computer memory card, was soon corrected. Once the card malfunctioned, it shut down, Lowe said.

"That computer did not try to hide anything," she said. "If you'll remember, it showed a minus sign. He is totally crazy if he even insinuates that it was an inside job in Volusia County."

A spokesman for Diebold said the company sent a letter to Sancho in June, challenging his earlier tests. Sancho granted access to computer experts in his "alleged" test that wouldn't be achieved in a real-world voting environment, the letter said.

Volusia County elections chief McFall took a similar position.

"You'd have to break six or seven security rules that we have in place to do it," she said.

Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of State, said state officials were not invited to the tests and couldn't comment.