Florida wants limited voting machine checks

State election officials have proposed new
restrictions on testing voting machines in the
wake of a test that exposed security flaws in 
one system.

 BY GARY FINEOUT
gfineout@MiamiHerald.com
TALLAHASSEE - Months after a maverick elections supervisor irritated 
a leading voting-machine company and state officials by conducting 
unorthodox tests on voting equipment -- and finding security problems 
-- the state wants to make it harder for counties to check voting 
machines.
  The state is proposing rules that require all 67 election supervisors 
in Florida to get approval from the state Division of Elections before 
testing their voting equipment for any problems, including whether or 
not it has security flaws or if the vote-counting software is working 
correctly.
  The new rule would require county supervisors to submit a ''testing 
plan'' to the division, as well as to notify the maker of the machine 
before the test can take place. Any results of the test would have to 
be sent to state officials.
  ''The purpose is to make the process more transparent,'' said Jenny 
Nash, a spokeswoman for the Department of State. ``Certainly any 
supervisor can test any machine. It's just so the department and vendor 
will be included. In essence, it's so all parties have the same 
information.''
  But Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho says the state 
proposal is an effort to curtail any future tests of voting equipment. 
Last year, Sancho allowed computer experts to hack into his county's 
optical-scan voting machine system, which is manufactured by Diebold, 
the same company that makes the ATM-styled touch-screen machines used 
in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
  The flaws exposed by the effort eventually led California, and then 
Florida, to devise new security procedures that prohibit one person 
from ever being alone with voting equipment.
  ''I guess [state officials] don't want to be embarrassed by any 
supervisor of elections finding something wrong,'' Sancho said.
  Sancho pointed out that the proposed rule says that the test can only 
use experts with select credentials -- a requirement that would rule 
out many leading computer science experts who have tested machines 
across the country.
  Sancho said he intends to show up with lawyers in hand at a public 
hearing on the new rule to question whether or not the state even has 
the legal authority to impose the stringent new requirements.
  Miami-Dade and Broward county election officials did not respond to 
several phone calls from The Miami Herald. But some other election 
supervisors are not as critical of the new rule. Bill Cowles, the 
supervisor of elections for Orange County, said there was some 
''concern'' that the state was ''writing the procedures'' for 
supervisors, but said he understood why the state and vendors needed to 
know what was happening with voting equipment.