Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho asked state elections officials Friday to reexamine their voting machine certification program after computer experts conducting tests in Sancho's office hacked into Diebold machines and altered the vote count.

Gov. Jeb Bush, despite calling Sancho as a "maverick" who uses "unorthodox" methods, said earlier in the day that incoming Secretary of State Sue Cobb should "carefully" consider Sancho's complaint.

Volusia County Council members, and the voters they represent, have a lot to thank the supervisor of elections for.

We're not talking about Ann McFall, who oversees voting in this county. We're talking about Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor for Leon County.

Sancho did what McFall should have done. He invited computer-security experts to hack into the Accuvote system made by Diebold Elections Systems -- the same voting system Volusia County uses. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the hack was successful, as it has been in other parts of the country. The experts, representatives of elections-security advocacy group BlackBoxVoting.org, were able to break into Leon County machines three times in a four-month period. Each time, the experts were able to change voting tallies without leaving evidence of their electronic vandalism.

Some would argue that Sancho stacked the deck against the Diebold machines by allowing access to his mainframe system and the cards used to program computers at precincts. But the experts had the same access that elections-office staffers or (in many counties) company technical-support personnel would have. Their ability to break in proves the need for more extensive security protocols, but it also raises doubts about whether it's possible to secure an electronic-only system against tampering.

Groups looking to put citizens' constitutional initiatives before voters statewide are worried that work being performed by the state Division of Elections could jeopardize their chances of appearing on the November ballot.

The division, which is putting the finishing touches on the state's central voter database, has told local elections supervisors that they will be unable to update the computerized voter file between Dec. 23 and Jan. 3, when the database goes online.

But petition groups note their deadline for verifying voter signatures is Feb. 1 and they're worried the downtime could overload elections supervisors.

To qualify for the November ballot, groups must gather 611,001 valid signatures, then win approval for the amendment's language by the Florida Supreme Court.

acting Florida Secretary of State David Mann, whose office oversees the state elections department, said Thursday that he has such "confidence" in his agency's certification process that he has no intention of doing any double-checking right now.

At the center of the controversy: Leon County's elections chief, Ion Sancho, a nonpartisan maverick who's determined to avoid the 2000 Florida elections' debacle that led lawmakers to mandate the very computerized voting systems he is now questioning.

We're talking about it over at FLA POlitics.
Over the past six months, Sancho gave two computer hackers access to his optical-scan voting machines, in which voters cast fill-in-the-blank ballots. Attacking different parts of the system from the inside, the hackers said they were able to easily bypass security codes, make losing candidates win, add or subtract voters -- and do it without leaving a trace. ...

The reports from the Leon County hackers, especially the most recent from Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, raised red flags in the small world of computer-security and voting experts.

The Elections Office held a mock election where eight voters were asked to answer "yes" or "no" to the question "Can the votes on this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?" Testers inserted a memory card into the Diebold machine that included a program designed to alter votes and leave no trace of tampering.

Two people marked their ballots with "yes" votes, while six marked "no." The ballots were fed into the machine and, when final results were printed out, they showed that seven people voted "yes" and one voted "no." The false results were accepted by the Elections Office's main computer, and no evidence was left, Sancho said.

"This is significant," Sancho said, "because this shows that Florida's voting machine certification program failed to identify critical security and design flaws in this voting system."

Some people will think that the Tallahassee election supervisor's experiment of hacking into his voting machines was just a bit of grandstanding. But even if it were -- and we don't think it was -- anyone responsible for, or interested in, accurate election results should pay close attention. The tests by Leon County election supervisor Ion Sancho showed that even voting equipment believed to be secure can remain vulnerable to a determined hacker.

Several state lawmakers haven't complied fully with new rules affecting accounts that can accept unlimited funds.

Abramoff was a prominent Republican fundraiser and lobbyist who had close ties to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who faces money laundering charges in Texas. Kidan also is involved in the investigation of the 2001 murder of SunCruz founder Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was slain while driving his luxury car in Fort Lauderdale. The killing, about five months after Boulis sold SunCruz to Kidan and Abramoff, came during a bitter dispute over control of the company.

a month before voters went to the polls, criticism of ACORN mounted. Stuart filed his lawsuit; the Department of Law Enforcement took the unusual step of publicizing the fact it was investigating ACORN; and another lawsuit filed in state court in Tallahassee, but later withdrawn, alleged the group committed fraud in collecting petitions for the ballot measure.

a federal judge in South Florida has ruled at least some of those accusations against grass roots political group ACORN were so baseless they amount to defamation.

U.S. District Judge James King has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mac Stuart, a former ACORN employee, saying Stuart never provided evidence to support his claim that he was fired because he uncovered voter fraud.

An 11/27-30 poll of 386 Florida Republicans by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research:

Undecided: 55 percent
Charlie Crist: 24 percent
Tom Gallagher: 21 percent

The margin of error is about plus or minus five percent. The poll has been weighted for age, race, gender and party affiliation. Said Florida Insider, the subscription news service reporting the poll:

"Whites chose Crist, but Hispanics liked Gallagher. Crist held a slight edge among men. Women divided evenly between the two candidates.

Fed up with "outrageous" executive compensation and "undemocratic" proxy voting at public companies, Gov. Jeb Bush and two other state leaders ordered Florida's public pension fund Tuesday to take a leading role nationally in pushing for corporate governance reform. ...

"For some of these salaries, there seems no rhyme or reason; they're self-perpetuating," [Coleman Stipanovich, the pension fund's executive director] said. "When you see an executive making 400 times what their average employee makes there is something wrong with that." ...

Tuesday, Bush, Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher and Attorney General Charlie Crist, the pension fund's three trustees, said they wanted Stipanovich to become more visible - a striking contrast for a pension fund that usually shuns the spotlight. Gallagher and Crist are running for the Republican nomination for governor, positioning to succeed Bush when his term expires in 2007.

Though led by three statewide elected officials, Florida's investment strategies have never been nearly as controversial or politically charged as some other large public funds. The most obvious example is the nation's largest public pension fund, California's CALPERS, where state employee unions and other constituencies serve as trustees.

On Tuesday, Gov. Jeb Bush said he did not favor imposing any income restrictions on who can claim reimbursement for generators and chain saws but expressed concern about the overpayments.

"This shouldn't be a boondoggle," he said.

Tallahassee · Gov. Jeb Bush's administration will spend $6 million to boost the state's construction work force by putting the money toward training programs that can quickly get carpenters, roofers, and other workers on to job sites.

The United States is the only remaining democracy that regularly executes prisoners. This nation's zeal for the death penalty puts it in league with China, Iran and Vietnam -- together, the four countries hold responsibility for 95 percent of the executions in 2004.

An immigration bill headed for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week would cripple Florida's multibillion-dollar agriculture industry if it becomes law as now written, a group representing the state's farmers warned Congress on Tuesday.

In a sternly worded letter faxed to lawmakers, the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association said that: "Because Florida agriculture is so heavily dependent upon aliens with fake documents to harvest our fruits and vegetables," as much as 90 percent of the work force could be eliminated, "which could spell the end of labor-intense agriculture not only in Florida but across the U.S."

Bush's administration also is considering whether it must cancel receptions that the governor usually holds for state legislators the first week of the session, since the governor and his agencies also lobby the Legislature.

Mark Herron, a lawyer and former member of the Florida Ethics Commission who often advises the Florida Democratic Party, said he believes the law may force Bush to cancel such events.

"It is more far-reaching than they all realize," Herron said.

Republican insiders believe Rep. Katherine Harris, with her fund- raising in the dumps and her staff constantly in flux, may drop out of the U.S. Senate race in Florida against first-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

Nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak predicted Sunday that the end is near for her campaign.

"I am in this campaign until Election Day next November," said Harris, R-Longboat Key. "Any rumors or speculation to the contrary are completely false."

Florida's big business lobby added its voice Monday to the debate over oil and gas drilling off the state's coast, arguing energy costs are too high to leave resources untapped.

In calling for drilling in areas currently off limits, Associated Industries of Florida may risk alienating some in the biggest business in Florida - tourism, where some fear spills that could spoil the state's beaches.

Barney Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida, assembled a group of agribusiness, transportation, chemical and manufacturing executives to endorse a plan by U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., that would expand offshore oil and gas development. Bishop said Florida has growing fuel needs in tourism, farming, industry and home utilities - but does not produce any significant energy.

Harris became a national personality as Florida secretary of state, supporting George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential recount.

desperate for a win, left their state party convention Sunday with what they hope will serve as a road map to victory: depicting Republicans as beset with political scandals and an increasingly unpopular war.

From their candidates for state Agriculture Commissioner to potential presidential candidates in 2008, Democrats meeting here over three days decried what they called a culture of corruption and cronyism in Washington, D.C. and Tallahassee. ...

To be sure, the task is daunting for a state party that is at one of its weakest points in a century, having lost control of both legislative chambers, the governor's office and even the elected Cabinet.

But without a Bush on the ballot -- for the first time in more than a decade -- Democrats say time and events may be on their side, even as they acknowledge the Republican party is all but certain to outraise them in campaign contributions.