Sancho: Florida primary safe from data breaches

Elections data breaches by foreign agents have been confirmed in Illinois and Arizona, but Florida’s primary is safe from any hacking, officials say.

Florida Division of Elections directors recommended blocking traffic from nine IP addresses to avoid any unauthorized access, according to a Friday email sent to all 67 supervisors of elections.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner said no hacking issues were affecting Florida’s primary election during a conference call Tuesday morning.

Leon County polls close in an hour

Leon County Supervisor Ion Sancho said Florida’s elections system has safeguards against a wide-sweeping data breach.

“This is troubling but it is less troubling in a state like Florida where each county maintains a separate database as well being a part of the state database,” he said.

Each county can separate from the state database and can operate on paper ballots if a problem arises.

“The internet is terribly insecure,” Sancho continued. “In terms of voting, there isn’t any insurance that covers a mistake here. We have to be very very concerned that about ensuring that there is not any internet or Wifi connection to any voting device in the state of Florida.”

Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.