Disputed Sarasota Florida Congressional election hit by Slammer worm

The ongoing dispute over the results of the Congressional election in Florida where 18000 votes cast on ES&S electronic voting machines went uncounted and the winning candidate got elected by a margin of 369 votes, is continuing to throw up many interesting anomalies, according to Brad Friedman at ComputerWorld.

"The computer database infrastructure of Sarasota County, Fla., was attacked by a notorious Internet worm on the first day of early voting during the 2006 election, which featured the now-contested U.S. House race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan in Florida's 13th Congressional district.

In the early afternoon hours on Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, an Internet worm slammed into the county's database system, breaching its firewall and overwriting the system's administrative password. The havoc brought the county's network -- and the electronic voting system which relies on it -- to its knees as Internet access was all but lost at voting locations for two hours that afternoon."

Evoting junkies might recall Friedman reporting a couple months ago on the apparent ES&S effort to restrict the terms of the post election investigation into the 18000 undervote.