Ion Sancho is the Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Florida -- that's Tallahassee, folks, the capital of Florida, Jeb's gubernatorial office and Katherine Harris's old civil rights-stomping grounds. Sancho runs elections right in the belly of the beast.
This morning, Ion Sancho went on the attack, putting his lawyers on Diebold for breach of contract. See Bradblog Story for the latest breaking news on this. Ion Sancho said, as reported by Bradblog, "We filed a breach action this morning."
Sancho is referring to Diebold's failure to honor its contractual commitments with Leon County's elections division.
From the Miami Herald:
''It's been a rough few weeks,'' Sancho said Monday, nearly in tears.
"...California's voting systems assessment board issued a report last month that cited -- in the very first paragraph -- Leon County's security tests. Sancho had dispatched renowned computer expert Harri Hursti of Finland to attempt to hack Leon County's Diebold voting system. He did. Hursti demonstrated that someone inside the supervisor's office could both alter the outcome of an election and erase any trace of his meddling."
More from the Miami Herald article
"CONCERNS WERE VALID"
"California's follow-up investigation ''absolutely vindicated Sancho's concerns,'' said David Wagner, a University of California computer scientist and a member of the voting machine assessment board. ``Our report found all of Ion Sancho's concerns were valid and, in fact, worse than anyone realized.''
Last month, California quickly issued a series of fixes for the holes in the system. On Friday afternoon, the Florida secretary of state's office sent out the same California security directives to county election supervisors. Of course, there was no mention that the California findings had been available all along right there in Ion Sancho's Tallahassee office.
"...Wagner noted, instead of getting credit, Sancho has been savaged. One vendor canceled his orders at the last minute, one refused to sell him machines, the third won't return his phone calls."
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The state of Florida and the limited pool of three private corporations authorized to sell voting machines in Florida appear to have tag-teamed Sancho, trying to drive him out of office.
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From the Miami Herald:
"... The state, rather than react to possible collusion, promptly canceled his grant and threatened to sue him for failing to fulfill his official duties. A couple of [Republican] Leon County commissioners have joined the pummeling.
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Here's the background on this, published last Friday by Black Box Voting:
"You could steal the election and no one would ever know," Leon County (FL) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho says.
Sancho arranged for an independent study by Black Box Voting with security experts Harri Hursti and Dr. Herbert Thompson, discovering critical security flaws in the Diebold voting system. These flaws were confirmed in a study ordered by the California Secretary of state. Today the state of Florida issued a Technical Advisory to all Supervisors of Elections based on these findings.
And today, Sancho received a letter from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. State Sue Cobb, threatening action by the state of Florida to take over Leon County elections.
Letter from Jeb Bush/Sue Cobb to Sancho
Ion Sancho is one of the most highly respected elections officials in the nation. He stood up to the state of Florida, refusing to cooperate with purging voters who are not felons from the voters list, working from lists provided by the state of Florida erroneously claiming they were felons. Felon Disenfranchisement: Purging the Minority Vote
It is Sancho who was chosen to lead the Florida hand count in the contentious 2000 Bush v. Gore race. The U.S. Supreme Court nixed the hand count.
Scarcely begun, recounts halted in 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
And it is Sancho who has provided the most convincing evidence of the utter failure of both the federal testing labs and Florida's state voting machine testing. Neither the federal labs caught the defects which are referred to in the Hursti Report as "the mother of all security holes" and "an unlockable revolving door."
Diebold knew
After the findings in Leon County were published in May 2005, Diebold responded by attacking and smearing the messenger (Ion Sancho), denying the problem instead of fixing the system.
Diebold letters to officials
Instead of warning other elections officials so they could improve security by taking countermeasures, Diebold sent hundreds of letters to elections officials throughout the U.S. smearing Sancho for being "irresponsible" and denying that the flaws exist.
Diebold's denials didn't work in Pennsylvania. The state of Pennsylvania, after independent testing by Carnegie-Mellon computer scientist Michael Shamos, refused to certify the system.
Pennsylvania declines some Diebold...
The state of California commissioned its own independent study Berkeley Report, which confirmed the results from Leon County:
"Harri Hursti's attack does work: Mr. Hursti's attack on the AV-OS is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server."
...
"Memory card attacks are a real threat: We determined that anyone who has access to a memory card of the AV-OS, and can tamper it (i.e. modify its contents), and can have the modified cards used in a voting machine during election, can indeed modify the election results from that machine in a number of ways. The fact that the the results are incorrect cannot be detected except by a recount of the original paper ballots."
...
"Successful attacks can only be detected by examining the paper ballots: There would be no way to know that any of these attacks occurred; the canvass procedure would not detect any anomalies, and would just produce incorrect results. The only way to detect and correct the problem would be by recount of the original paper ballots, e.g. during the 1 percent manual recount."
Diebold issued written statements to the Arizona Secretary of State and to elections officials throughout America claiming that passwords were needed, and also that the vulnerabilities did not exist.
Three vendors make it impossible to buy
Diebold punished Leon County elections chief Ion Sancho by breaching its contract, refusing to provide upgrades that Leon County had already paid for. Without the upgrades, Leon County could not stay HAVA compliant.
When Sancho went to Election Systems & Software (ES&S) for a replacement system, ES&S led him on for weeks, then on the eve of the Florida deadline, refused to sell to him.
Sancho went to the only remaining authorized vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems (a system that revealed over 100,000 errors in its voting system computer logs during the 2004 presidential election), but Sequoia stalled the talks and failed to provide Sancho with an offer.
The companies seem to be tag-teaming with the state of Florida, which has given Sancho just a few weeks to purchase a system. If all three companies stall just long enough, they can effectively oust Sancho.
The state of Florida knew
In July 2005, Black Box Voting sent a certified copy of the Hursti Report to then-Florida secretary of state Glenda Hood and to then-Florida voting system chief, Paul Craft. In addition, Paul Craft received a letter from world-renowned M.I.T. security expert Ronald Rivest warning that the Hursti findings were a serious concern.
Yet the state of Florida did no additional study or testing. Glenda Hood and Paul Craft resigned suddenly in November 2005, with Sue Cobb and David Drury taking over -- but no studies of the critical security flaw identified in Leon County were ordered by either the former or the current secretary of state, nor were any studies done by either voting system examiner.
The problem was first reported by Black Box Voting in May 2005, with formal reports going out by certified mail in July 2005. After no action by Florida officials, a full fledged demonstration of hacking the election in Leon County took place on Dec. 13, 2005
At this time, Gov. Jeb Bush promised to look into the problem, but commissioned no studies and did nothing to decertify the system after its flaws were confirmed in other states.
Volunteers ready and willing to hand count Leon County; Florida says it's against the law
When news of vendor stonewalling against Ion Sancho spread across the nation, volunteers from as far away as New Hampshire and Texas began plans to step in and hand-count the next two Leon County elections.
Jeb Bush isn't having any part of that: No hand counts can take place in Florida. It's the law.
The state of Florida has not only continued to demand that officials purchase unauditable paperless touch-screens, but actually accelerated the schedule. Whereas most states require HAVA-compliant systems by the first federal election in 2006, Florida moved the compliance date up to January 2006.
Florida has declined to certify the AutoMark, a device that enables election supervisors to comply with a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandate for the disabled, forcing county officials to use only paperless touch-screen machines for disabled voters.
Florida missing a key protection for county election officials
Privatization of public necessities into the hands of for-profit companies does not work unless certain safeguards are in place. In Florida, voting system suppliers must be authorized by the state. The state has approved only three suppliers.
There are other industries which are limited to a few suppliers -- power companies, telecommunications providers, cable networks. However, in order to become authorized suppliers these vendors MUST agree to sell to willing buyers.
In other words, "You can only buy from this limited pool of vendors, but they, in turn, MUST sell to you."
The business model doesn't work if you don't force the limited supplier pool to sell to willing buyers. Florida's failure to properly structure the elections business model has created an impossible situation in Leon County.
Requiring vendors to sell to willing buyers is a KEY SAFEGUARD in cases where the government limits the supplier pool for a public necessity.
- The state of Florida failed in its duty to ensure secure voting systems. It's testing failed to spot critical security flaws.
- The state of Florida failed to enact a provision requiring voting system supplier to sell to willing buyers, while at the same time, limiting the pool of suppliers to just three vendors who can refuse service at will.
- Diebold Election Systems failed to warn its customers of known security problems, denied the problems, and punished the county elections official who discovered the problem by refusing to perform on its paid-in-advance contract.
The Associated Press reported last Friday that Sancho plans to fight.
"We will be talking to our lawyers over the weekend," Sancho said. "Somebody is going to pay for it."
Looks like Sancho is taking the gloves off against Diebold.
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