If you thought election tampering ended with the 2000 and 2004 elections, Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho wants you to think again.

Last Saturday evening at the Greg Palast lecture inside University of Tampa’s Fletcher Auditorium, Sancho told a sold-out audience there are still flaws in Florida’s voting procedures, and that without the public demanding change from the Legislature (and fair reporting by the media), the same problems the U.S. saw in 2000 and 2004 will translate to 2006, 2008 and beyond.

“The process should be flipped on its head,” said Sancho, who caught the ire of Diebold last year after running tests that revealed their voting machines can be manipulated.

From security-challenged Diebold touch voting machines to the active suppression of minority voters by the Republican Party, Sancho railed against the third-world voting flaws in our supposedly first-world democracy.

“The only reason we have elections is not to test votes, but count them accurately,” he said. “I don’t believe that’s a controversial issue.”

One of the biggest issues facing voters nationwide is touch-screen voting machines, Sancho explained. For one, the software is still not publicly available. And there is still no receipt for your vote — something Sancho feels is outrageous.

“It’s ironic that if we go down to the local store … you’re going to get a receipt to verify that your purchase … is accurate,” he said. “But with voting you don’t get any proof.”

With that, Palast took the stage and continued the theme of uncounted votes: African-Americans have a 900 percent higher chance than whites of not having their vote counted. For Native Americans, it’s 2,000 percent.

At the end of his speech, Palast told the audience that voting is the best way to enact change.

“Make them steal it,” he said.

The crowd’s applause was not enthusiastic.

“I know that many of you are looking for the answer to ‘Who are we going to vote for?’” he continued.

He segued into a story about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and how the poor residents of St. Bernard Parish were left to drown when city officials purposefully destroyed levees to save the richer areas of town. The event triggered the explosion of a vigorous populist movement across the country and prompted Franklin D. Roosevelt to run for president under the New Deal banner years later.

“If we create the movement, we don’t have to find FDR,” Palast finally answered. “FDR will find us.”

This time the applause was sustained.

This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.