Hot on the heels of the story out of California about the successful hacking of voting machines there comes another one out of Florida.

Two years ago, Florida’s Election Supervisor of Leon County, Ion Sanch0, brought in a computer expert to test the security of the voting machines. This expert, Finnish computer Harri Hursti, was able to hack the machine and not leave a trace that it was done. The hack was dismissed by Florida’s secretary of state and the machine’s manufacturer, Diebold Systems, because it didn’t take place in a “real world” environment.

Today, Florida finds itself having to admit what it knew two years ago, these machines are indeed vulnerable to an untraceable hack.

This comes after hacks done in a research study by Florida State University which yielded similar results:

The study by Florida State University found that, despite recent software fixes, an ”adversary” could use a pre-programmed computer card to swap one candidate’s votes for another or create a “ballot-stuffing attack” that multiplies votes for a candidate or issue.

A Diebold spokesman, Mark Radke, said the company is confident it will upgrade the ”minor” software glitch by an Aug. 17 deadline the state has set. If it doesn’t, Secretary of State Kurt Browning said his office would eventually ban the use of optiscan Diebold machines in Florida, where 25 counties, including Monroe, use its fill-in-the-blank systems.

All other voting vendors are being examined for the same security issues, including Elections Systems & Software machines, which Miami-Dade and Broward use as well. A new state law requires that, by next year, all counties must use paper-trail style machines.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again — I am all for technological advancement but, how it is implemented is often just as, if not more important, than the technology itself. If we can’t rely upon and adequately verify the results of a vote, we are worse-served than hand-counting ballots.

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