Ion Sancho (politician)
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Ion Voltaire Sancho (born December 6, 1950 in New York City) is an elected public official serving Leon County, Florida, USA as Supervisor of Elections. As the family moved around, first to the South and later to the Midwest, Sancho as eldest cared younger siblings. He moved to Florida after high school.
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[edit] Education
Sancho received his A.A. degree from Valencia Community College in 1973. He then received is B.A. in Social Science from Stetson University in 1978. Sancho completed his education with a J.D. from Florida State University Law School in 1987.
[edit] More on Sancho
In 1984 Sancho, a Democrat, was the Leon County leader for Presidential candidate Gary Hart. Sancho is a State Certified Supervisor of Elections and nationally certified by the Elections Center as a Certified Elections/Registration Administrator (CERA). He's a former staff member of the Florida House of Representatives, Corrections, Probation & Parole Committee. He is a member of the Center for Policy Alternatives, Voter Participation Advisory Board and member of The Elections Center.
[edit] Supervisor of Elections
After a bid as county commissioner in 1986 Sancho took courses in election machine management and and became certified in their use. In November of 1988, Sancho was elected to his first term as the Supervisor of Elections for Leon County, Florida. He ran and was re-elected in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, serving his fifth term as of January 2, 2005. He was unopposed in each election since 1992.
[edit] National recognition
Sancho, (No Party Affiliation), gained national recognition when he gave Finnish security expert Harri Hursti and Black Box Voting, an anti-electronic voting machine group, access to one of Leon County's Diebold voting machines to see whether the machine could be hacked into and the count altered. The test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday December, 13, 2005 with a total of eight ballots. Six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson of Security Innovation and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.
(Most voters (99%) in Leon County use the opti-scan equipment, but federal law requires one electronic machine per precinct for visually impaired voters).
[edit] The test election
At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with both plus and minus votes. The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine. The correct results should have been 2 votes Yes, 6 votes No. However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read 7 votes Yes, 1 vote No.
The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator, a step cited by Diebold as a protection against memory card hacking. The central tabulator pulls in all votes from voting machines. However, the GEMS central tabulator failed to notice that the voting machines had been hacked. The results in the central tabulator read: Yes:7; No:1.
This test election was videotaped and was witnessed by Black Box Voting investigators Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne, Florida Fair Elections Coalition [1] Director Susan Pynchon, security expert Dr. Herbert Thompson, and Susan Bernecker, a former candidate for New Orleans city council who videotaped Sequoia-brand touch-screen voting machines in her district recording vote after vote for the wrong candidate.
It demonstrated that Diebold made misrepresentations to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card, the credit card-sized ballot box used by computerized voting machines.
Afterwards, Secretary of State Sue Cobb (R) accused him of "undermining voter confidence" and demanded the return of a $564,000 grant Sancho had received to pay for the machines.
[edit] Results of Sancho's actions
As a result, Diebold, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems, the only 3 companies certified to do business in Florida would not sell Sancho voting machines. Automark was contacted by Sancho but the Secretary of State would not certify their voting equipment. ES&S said, "did not believe it could have a smooth working relationship with Sancho".[2]
In Florida, Volusuia County joined Leon County in dumping Diebold. Elections officials in the states of Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, and California have called into question the security and accuracy of new voting machines.
I'm very troubled by this, to be honest—I can't believe the way he's being treated. What kind of message is this sending to elections supervisors?
—David Wagner, computer scientist, the University of California
At a Leon County Commission meeting on February 28, 2006, county staff revealed that Chuck Owen, Division Counsel for Diebold Election Systems, met with county staff behind closed doors on February 27. According to staff, Owen stated that Diebold would sell its touch-screen voting machines to the county if, and only if, the county removed Supervisor Sancho from office.
At Leon County Commission meetings on February 14 and February 28, 2006 the only two Republicans in either Tallahassee or Leon County government, Tony Grippa and Ed Depuy of Leon County's seven-member county commission blasted Sancho for failing to provide Leon County with accessible voting machines in attacks that Sancho believes were politically motivated.
On February 28, Commissioner DePuy offered a motion, seconded by Commissioner Grippa to request the State Attorney to convene a Grand Jury to investigate why Leon County is not in compliance with the voting regulations.
The federal certification process for voting machines is broken, sadly, when it comes to security. It was designed for the era of mechanical machines, and it hasn't kept up.
—David Wagner, computer scientist, the University of California
[edit] In the media
Sancho has been on National Public Radio and is familiar to readers of the New York Times, the Washington Post, St. Petersburg Times and appears in the 2006 HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy."[3]
