BlogWood: MT Archives

Doddering old fool lacks competence to run elections

Let’s face it: Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson should go back to running restaurants, because he obviously lacks the skill and knowledge necessary to run Hillsborough County’s elections.

Buddy doesn’t know much about computers, but he knows what Jeb! wants him to say, and he’s been touting the company line ever since he was appointed by the Governor to replace newly elected Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

Back in February, BlogWood readers learned that Buddy was exhibiting a stunning lack of concern about the increasingly well documented problems inherent in these machines.

It would take ``an unbelievable conspiracy'' to breach the security of the machines, which replaced punch-card ballots used in 2000, Johnson said.

As I pointed out in that February post, security is not the only concern, seeing as Hillsborough County’s machines use Microsoft software. Any one who has ever used Windows knows that Microsoft software is buggy. It crashes. It was also never designed for secure vote counting, but Buddy’s Rumsfeldian outlook on democracy conveniently allows for some wiggle room:

"There's never been a perfect election," Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said. "And there never will be."

Well, elections may not be perfect, but wouldn’t perfection be a good goal to strive for?

Regardless of his goal, Buddy dropped the ball repeatedly during the primary. First, Buddy’s infallible computers failed, causing a huge delay in the counting of the vote. Next, 245 votes from one precinct were lost. Then, Buddy had to have a reporter point out to him the fact that he had the wrong vote totals posted on his official county website since whenever he figured out what he wanted the final tally to be.

Now, to be fair, Buddy has blamed most of these problems on human error rather than computer glitches. I guess that means that Buddy is admitting to administrative incompetence, but is standing by the integrity of the voting machines, although he may not have made that leap of logic himself quite yet.

That brings us up to date, more or less, and sets the stage for today’s confirmation that Buddy is a doddering old fool.

Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said Wednesday that steps had been taken earlier this year to reduce a security risk in the county's touch-screen voting system detailed in a Tampa Tribune article this week.

The flaw could have enabled vote totals to be manipulated, leaving little trace, according to computer security experts.

Johnson said security measures were installed to diminish the risk in Hillsborough County after a widely distributed report commissioned by Ohio elections officials late last year first identified the potential problem. Pinellas County elections officials rely on similar security measures for their touch-screen voting machines.

In interviews with the Tribune last week, Johnson did not mention the protective measures taken by his office when asked about the potential security risk.

He said Wednesday that he misunderstood the Tribune's questions and thought the newspaper was referring to a newer report. In a written response published on today's Our Opinion page, Johnson explained: ``I believed that your reporter was referencing some new information, not a report published in November 2003.''

The Tribune, however, had provided Johnson - at his request - a copy of the report in question four days before the story was published Tuesday.

The report, and another by computer science Professor Douglas W. Jones for Miami- Dade County, warns that computers equipped with elements of the popular Microsoft Office suite software package can be used to manipulate vote totals without leaving a record because it shares the same database format as the touch-screen voting equipment.

Because of that risk, Ohio forbids computers equipped with the software to be used in election-night headquarters where votes from touch- screen machines are being tabulated. The report describes the likelihood of anyone abusing the security weakness as ``low'' but rates its potential effect as ``high.''

In his written response to the Tribune's Page 1 story, Johnson said his office had taken ``management control measures'' to reduce the risk identified in the Ohio report.

Among the measures implemented in Hillsborough County to guard against the risk, Johnson said in an interview, are allowing many onlookers inside the ``clean room'' where the computers are used to tabulate votes on election night and limiting access to supervisory functions on the computers.

Similar steps have been taken by Pinellas County, which also uses touch-screen voting systems produced by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Theresa LePore, the elections supervisor of the third Florida county to use the system, Palm Beach, could not be reached.

The Ohio report identified Microsoft Access, its flagship database program, as the focus of its concern.

A Sequoia spokesman said the company believes security measures taken by Johnson are sufficient to guard against the danger.

Jones, a member of Iowa's voting systems certification team and a consultant in jurisdictions scattered throughout the nation, said he would prefer that Microsoft Office suite and Access in particular be removed from computers used to tabulate votes.

In conversations with the newspaper last week, Johnson said the Microsoft Office suite security concern was a surprise to him and he would have to research the issue before addressing it.

Johnson also criticized the newspaper's use of the report commissioned by Miami- Dade because it applies to a voting system produced by Omaha, Neb.-based Electronic Systems and Software Inc.

Jones, the author of that report, said his comments on the Microsoft Office suite danger apply equally to systems produced by Sequoia Voting Systems such as the one in Hillsborough.

So, Buddy feels that there are so many security questions that he can’t keep up with them all, or maybe he thinks that everything is just fine, or perhaps these new-fangled computer thingys are just too fancy for anyone to fully comprehend, but, hey, the screens are right purdy, and things happen when you touch them, just like an ATM, only you don’t get a receipt, which really makes them better than an ATM, right?.

Obviously, Buddy’s chief qualification for this job was his political support of Jeb!. When counting votes, he feels that a ballpark estimate is good enough, which actually logically leads to his idea that posting accurate totals is not necessarily important.

He thinks that computers are infallible, except when they’re not, but, again, let’s not try to introduce accuracy into the election, ‘cause that might be hard to do.

Finally, it’s becoming crystal clear that his non-techincal management of his office is less than adequate, especially if one takes him at his word that most of the recent glitches were caused by human error.

Happily, we can vote Jeb!’s Buddy out this November. Send a message that votes are important and that a paper trail is key to transparent and auditable elections.

Rob Mckenna is running against Buddy. Rob understands computers, he knows how to count, and he wants to bring some integrity to our electoral process.