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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Friday, June 10, 2005

Black Box in Tallahassee and Hood Ain't happy

    Ion Sancho, Leon County's stellar Supervisor of Elections has angered both Diebold and Glenda Hood; he's obviously doing something right:
    An attorney for the company that makes Leon County's [optical scan] voting equipment [Diebold Election Systems Inc.] told state and county officials Thursday it was "very foolish and irresponsible" for Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho to let an outside group [Black Box Voting in Renton, Wash] try poking holes in vote-tabulation security systems.
    Here's why they are upset - Sancho invited Black Box to game the Diebold security system, and they succeeded:
    [Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting] said Black Box evaded security systems and changed votes without setting off any alarms in its tests.

    "It took us less than a minute to replace the Diebold system with something we wrote and to hijack the whole system," she said.
    In response to the outrage expressed by Diebold (and Hood's office),
    Sancho said "the level of rhetoric" shows that Diebold and the state are defensive about security and that groups like Black Box Voting are ready to believe the worst. Florida voting methods have been a touchy topic since the 2000 presidential election, which was decided for President Bush by 537 votes after 36 days of court fights, street demonstrations and on-again, off-again recounts in some counties.
    Moreover, Sancho
    said he would do it again. He said it is important "to maintain public confidence in the integrity of elections" by allowing people with doubts to come in and test the systems under tightly controlled conditions.
    "Equipment test under fire". The Black Box Voting report on what they did in Tallahassee is available here.

6:17 AM

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