Florida, bloody Florida

We are seeing some interesting developments in the controversy over the Florida 13 anti-election. We learn, by way of the BradBlog, that Ed Felten -- the professor who did so much reveal the hackability of Diebold's machines -- is listed as participating in an independent audit of the Jennings/Buchanan vote. Here's what Felten has to say:

The second attempt was by the Department of State (DOS) of the state of Florida, who commissioned a study by outside experts. Oddly, I am listed in the official Statement of Work (SOW) as a principal investigator on the study team, even though I am not a member of the team. Many people have asked how this happened. The short answer is that I discussed with representatives of DOS the possibility of participating, but eventually it became clear that the study they wanted to commission was far from the complete, independent study I had initially thought they wanted.

The biggest limitation on the study is that DOS is withholding information and resources needed for a complete study. Most notably, they are not providing access to voting machines. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that if you want to understand the behavior of voting machines, it helps to have a voting machine to examine.

I've also been lax in directing readers to the work of Daniel Hopsicker, who has devoted four major pieces over the past month to the topic of electoral shennanigans in Florida. Turns out that if Felten wants to look at a voting machine, he can buy one:

Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent announced her intention this week to begin selling —presumably “as is”— hundreds of Sarasota's touch-screen voting machines proven defective by the November election, where they malfunctioned so badly that frustrated poll workers actually resorted to advising voters who were unable to get their votes to register to try using their knuckles.

Hopsicker goes on to make a point which has been mentioned many times in these pages: The big voting machine companies have unhealthy relationships with the officials designated with the task of insuring clean elections.

After Dent is either voted out of office, or, in a more likely scenario, resigns to “spend more time with her family,” they will be there with offers of assistance and employment.

It’s a well-trodden path, with election companies making defense contractors look like Boy Scouts in contracting the labor of people who only recently were charged with regulating their new employers.

In Florida, the past two Secretaries of State, responsible for state-wide elections, for example, both “cashed-in” after leaving public office by taking lucrative “lobbying” jobs with election machine companies.