Reply #9: FL: Kindergarten Security Procedures for Centralized Voter RegistrationDB

[autorank]

Hey, it’s Florida, what did you expect?

Florida

Computerworld
Auditor's Report Criticizes Florida's Voter Database
State agrees to fix security woes that could lead to unauthorized access

Marc Songini
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=13&articleId=112204

June 26, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Florida voter registration data can be vulnerable to theft, corruption, unauthorized access and alteration, despite the best efforts of elections officials, indicated a report by the Florida auditor general.

The report, released earlier this month by Auditor General William Monroe, found several IT security problems with the state's central voter registration database. "There were some procedures that were missing we felt needed to be in place," noted Jon Ingram, an IT audit manager in the Florida auditor general's office and a contributor to the report.

For instance, Ingram noted that the review of the system found that a state worker was erroneously given access to the database and that a worker whose contract was finished mistakenly retained access.

The Florida Voter Registration System (FVRS) database was created by Secretary of State Sue Cobb's office to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act. HAVA mandates that every state create a centralized voter information repository to, among other things, protect against election fraud. Work on the project started in 2003, and the database was rolled out in January.