Recent documents have surfaced indicating that the Florida Department of State was warned about massive vulnerabilities in our elections systems prior to Rick Scott's election, and did nothing about it.
Florida's Secretary of State is the chief elections officer. But the office is partisan appointed.
Newly elected Gov. Charlie Crist appointed then Paco County Supervisor of elections Kurt Browning to the postion in 2007. Browning held that position until April 2010, then retired abrubtly, three weeks after Rick Scott announced his candidacy.
Browning, who was also the head of the ES and S (election machine vendor) elections supervisors users group, was re-hired as a double-dipper in January of this year.
But in July 2010, with Dawn Roberts serving as interim secretary of state, an outfit called Florida Voters Foundation sent her a memo highlighting problems with the voting systems statewide.
Paragraph one gets right to it:
"We are writing to express concern over threats to Florida elections including voting systemsdefects, cyber security administrative procedures and inadequate county funding. All pose serious threats to Florida elections including the August 24 primary in 49 days and the general election in November."
Page three, paragraph four, indicates that a software patch for chips in the tabulating machines by Dominion which had acquired some of their hardware from ESand S, and software from Premier, was not given to Dominion in time to prevent those chips from failing.
As we know, a failure in vote counting memory cards downloading was blamed in the 38,000 rescanned ballot fiasco in Hillsborough County. Hillsborough uses Dominion voting systems.
Earlier in the report the group points out flaws in the optical scanning machines by Premier, which were also bought by Dominion voting systems.
Thus, 32 counties out of 67 have reportedly aquired bad code, AND potentially bad hardware which were used in the 2010 election of Rick Scott, and will be used again in the 2012 elections.
The group also noted lax cyber security as far as the submission of electronic ballots in that the official in charge of voter system certification David Drury, told all 67 county supervisors of elections, that "encryption would be optional" in the submission of those ballots.
Additionally, the same screen "freezing issue" that surfaced in the undervote issue of 2006 in Sarasota County which resulted in the erroneous "election" of Congressman Vern Buchanan, was also still evident in ES and S machines in 16 counties.
All of this, leading up to the 2010 election of Rick Scott.
The likelyhood that Kurt Browning didn't know about all these flaws prior to his strategic retirement is highly doubtful.
David Drury who was on hand with Kurt Browning during the recount of 2006 in Sarasota County involving the defective ES and S machines, was employed throughout Browning's retirement/six-month vacation.
Of course none of this conclusively prooves that anyone, knowing of these vulnerabilities, conspired to use said knowledge to ensure that the candidate of his choice, won the election.
No. There is no proof here. Only a trail of Machiavellian coincidences, circumstantial evidence and motive.
Strangely Florida Voters Foundation, charitable 501(c) ceased updating their website after their July 7, 2010 report. The phone number to their Miami address directs one straight to an automated message system that makes no mention of their organization.
However, their sourcing material listed in their report includes the State Constitution, Florida Department of State records, records from the United State's anti-trust lawsuit against ES and S, and a product advisory from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. All credible.
Read all about the Hillsborough election flaws leading to the election of Rick Scott in Rick Scott:Enemy of the State.
Available for download at Amazon.com Kindle Store
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