Officials in Florida's Broward County were scrambling Aug. 17 to put to rest a rumor that the county would allow high school students to try to breach the security of election computers in a mock election.
The idea surfaced at a meeting of the Broward County Commission Aug. 16, in which County Commission Chairman John Rodstrom suggested that computer savvy kids might get to hack their way into the election system, reported the Associated Press.
"That is not going to happen," Bob Cantrell, director of intergovernmental affairs for the Broward Supervisor of Elections, told Washington Technology.
School officials bristled at the very notion.
"Hackers in training? I don't think so," school board chairman Paul Eichner said, according to the AP report. "It's not the image I want for the Broward County School District."
The 10-member Broward County Commission, which will make a final decision on what kind of equipment to lease or purchase by Oct. 1, is debating between touch-screen or optical-scan machines.
Broward Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant has recommended to the council that it go with touch-screen machines, which some consider the more accurate of the two machines.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill in May that provides counties with $24 million to replace outdated punch-card systems with modern voting equipment, $6 million for voter education and training and $2 million for a centralized voter registration database.
The county has set aside almost $10 million in state and county funds for the new equipment, Cantrell said.
A number of large counties in Florida have decided to use touch-screen systems, he said. Among these are Dade and Palm Beach on the east coast, and Hillsborough and Pinellas on the west coast, he said.
Broward County, the second largest county in Florida, has 1.6 million residents, of which about 915,000 are registered voters.
Cantrell said the office of the Broward Supervisor of Elections was getting media inquiries from as far away as New York and Washington. But those weren't the only calls it was getting.
"I had kids calling me, asking ‘Can I come look at your machines and see if I can hack them?' " he said in disbelief.
