This is scary. Seems electronic voting is very easy to hack into and change results.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

Sancho’s most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the “memory card” that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.

Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:

“Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?”

Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.

“Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?” Sancho asked. “The answer was yes.”