Florida's top elections official under fire on two fronts

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Florida's top elections official under fire on two fronts

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau April 8, 2015 Updated 12 hours ago

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott's chief elections official is in big trouble with two key groups: state legislators who write the voting laws and county election supervisors who run elections.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner can't afford to alienate either constituency as Florida heads toward a presidential election in 2016, when the eyes of the nation will again be on the biggest battleground state.

Lawmakers blasted Detzner on Wednesday for fighting their plan to let people register to vote online by October 2017. Elections officials were livid to learn Detzner released private data on more than 45,000 voters, including judges and police officers -- and didn't alert them immediately.

Detzner's office acknowledged the security breach on so-called high-risk voters -- who should have been exempt from disclosure -- included judges, police, firefighters, prosecutors, public defenders, and crime victims and their family members, among others.

Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2015/04/08/5736012/floridas-top-elections-official.html#storylink=cpy

The three questions that I had immediately - when even the Republican dominated Florida Legislature is dubious of this guy how can he be effective? Why hasn't the information about his department's security breach made headlines all over the country?

And the most important question I have - if his department is that incompetent at controlling private information on individuals how can we trust them to run elections at all, much less online voting?

[ChiciB1]

1. I Have To Saw A A Very Long Time Resident

of Florida, my husbands IS a native, I'm not sure that any vote I've cast in many years has even been counted.

I decided to vote absentee after being a poll watcher myself, but even though you can SEE they got your ballot, there's no way to find out if it got counted. At least that's what I've been told. If anyone has other information, please advise.

Every -- Single -- Day, it's something else! I post here at DU for a while, then have to get away because I simply can't take the stress of point counter point on every single issue. To say NOTHING of what the IDIOTS on the Right are spewing!

I watch a lot of alternative TV, and some of the stuff coming to surface about Hillary is very upsetting to me. AND, even stuff that we as a country have been doing all over the world! I no longer feel we live in a Democracy, my voice doesn't count!

AND, Bill Nelson signed on with the Jewish Chuck Schumer against Obama!! EXHALE!!! No, not working, too up tight!

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2. We have to make sure our local Supervisors of Elections are trustworthy

I'm a native of Florida and except for the 1972 election (when I voted absentee in Polk County) I have voted in Leon County. We are very lucky here - we have Ion Sancho as our Supervisor. He fights for fair elections that can be documented.

But before Ion got elected, we had a clusterfuck election. One year the long time supervisor decided on the afternoon of the last day of filing that she would retire immediately after that election. The only person who had an opportunity to file as a candidate was her son who had been working in the office (nepotism, anyone). No one bothered to run against him as a write in. They didn't realize how essential the Supervisor of Elections office was and assumed that since the man had been working in the office for over ten years, he was competent to take over the office from his mother.

Wrong and even MORE WRONG! The next election, the first he ran on his own, was a disaster. Back then, we used the old lever machines. He did not make sure that the ballots were lined up properly or that the levers worked properly. Well before the end of the day voters complained that their votes had not gone through or that they had registered for the incorrect candidates.

There were lawsuits, acrimonious editorials and outrage all over the place. Ion Sancho ran against the incompetent son of a supervisor and won hands down. Ion's main campaign promise was to have easy to check, fair elections. He bought all new machines - optical scanners that scan paper ballots. The machines were programmed to kick out ballots that showed over and under votes or that were unreadable. That was in the 1988.

In 2000 Leon County was one of the few Florida counties with no election problems. Sancho was chosen to lead the recount in Miami-Dade County and advised Gadsden County on how to reprogram their optical scanners to sort out bad ballots. Since then, Sancho has gotten in trouble by working with activists to see how optical scanners could be hacked (see the movie "Hacking Democracy&quot .

So long as Ion Sancho is our Supervisor of Elections I will have confidence that my vote will be counted. I dread when he retires and hope than when he does he will endorse a well trained successor to take his place.

If every Supervisor of Elections were as competent and honest as Ion Sancho we could all concentrate on forcing our legislators to create fair districts!

[ChiciB1]

3. WOW, Just Checked Back In Here & I See My Last Post

was very DEFINITELY not proof read!! I was in a super hurry and it showed, even I wondered what my lead in line was.

Very glad you feel confident about voting, but where I live it's been difficult for me to attend local town hall meetings, much less Commissioner meetings. So few people show up mainly because the right knows they don't have to and those of us on the left may as well be spitting in the wind.

I recall several years back some of us presented a petition to Vern Buchanan's office about issues we wanted him to address. We had been protesting and finally went into his office to voice our grievances. They asked us to sign a log for him and told us they would "pass" it along as if we mattered. Since that time the only reaction I've received from him is to call me when they have a town hall meeting when he's in town. Don't know what they presented to him, but somehow he thinks I'm a Repuke! I've called his office many times telling them I'm not and I would appreciated it if they would make a note of it. The reason I know they think I'm one of them is that they always seem to make "inclusive" statements regarding their intentions. Generally some issue against what Obama is doing.

After Bush was handed the election in 2000, Katherine Harris was elected twice as my Congressional Representative and we would protest around her office too, She never bothered to call anyone back.

I've never trusted our SOE at any time since I started voting here. Our present SOE is a piece of work and not friendly in any way. Her husband is very is influential and there are so many functions that make the newspapers with the possibility of having their pics taken.

Anyway, my story FWIW. As I said I really don't know if I believe my vote is ever counted, have no proof it's not... but no assurance it is either. Not a very good feeling. More & more I feel like a smaller and smaller voice in ANYTHING that goes on here in FL!