ePluribus Media Community || FL Election Night results also hosted by external IT provider?

FL Election Night results also hosted by external IT provider?

by intranets

Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 10:44:04 PM EST

originally posted Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 06:37:15 AM EST -- bumped, cho

Contributions by intranets and luaptifer

It appears the Florida election night results (enight.dos.state.fl.us) matches the pattern observed in Ohio. The website is only active around elections, and appears to have the DNS changed to point to an external IT contractor off the official state IT servers.

While, no contract has been found, or even proof this same service provider was used beyond 2006, it is possible the 2004 FL election night webpage was also hosted on an external IP address.

The owner of the IP block where the FL Election Night webpage resided for the Nov 2006 election is ProSys Info Systems, who is also a minority owned Florida IT contractor.

In business since 1997, ProSys has grown from a $5 million solution provider to one with $436 million in sales this past year, up from $160 million in 2004.

commentary :: :: :: buzz-it!

Netcraft results for enight.dos.state.fl.us

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.30    Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    8-Feb-2007

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.30    Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    9-Nov-2006

Quality Technology Services   64.57.251.134   Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    6-Nov-2006

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.30    Windows 2000    Microsoft-IIS/5.0    5-Nov-2006

Quality Technology Services   64.57.251.134   Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    27-Oct-2006

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.30    Windows 2000    Microsoft-IIS/5.0    6-Sep-2006

Quality Technology Services   64.57.251.134   Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    30-Aug-2006

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.149    Windows 2003    Microsoft-IIS/6.0    26-Jul-2006

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.149    Windows 2000    Microsoft-IIS/5.0    4-Jun-2006

Florida Department of State     207.156.19.149    Windows 2000    Microsoft-IIS/5.0    2-Dec-2005

Quality Technology Services, LLC. owns the larger IP block with is split off into:
Prosys Info QTS-241-128-28 (NET-64-57-251-128-1) 64.57.251.128 - 64.57.251.143

Started in 1997 in Norcross, GA, ProSys was in Palm Beach County in 2000, and now appears to be in Tallahassee with offices all over Florida. ProSys provides storage, server and IT infrastructure and consulting offerings.

It is hard to find a contract like in Ohio where Dillman provided a great amount of details into Blackwell's contracting out the election night website. Again, this raises the question, why are election results being hosted on external webservers?

Republican Party Expenditures 2002

Prosys Information Systems
$1,178
7/2/2002
COMPUTER & EQUIPMENT

FORT LAUDERDALE CITY COMMISSION - DECEMBER 21, 2004

ProSys Information System
Tallahassee, FL
Amount: $ 76,398.00
Bids Solicited/Rec'd: N/A
Memorandum No. 04-1702 from City Manager.
The Procurement Services Department recommends approving purchase from the Florida State contract.

Federal Contract with Defense Dept. 2005

PROSYS INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Dollars Obligated $4,290
Automatic data processing equipment

There is another Federal Contractor from the same Norcross, GA called PROSYS CONSULTING CORPORATION

There are many, many more city and state contracts, but those are given as examples. It is possible the state contracted out with a reputable IT provider to handle election night "traffic". (This seems to be a new GOP modus operandi) In light of the Ohio webserver revelations, I highly suggest residents of Florida look into this Election Night webserver arrangement and inquire with the Secretary of State's office for more details. More research is needed here.

To be clear here, ProSys might be just an IT provider and someone else is being paid to host the election night website in their IP space. The state might have contracted out directly the backup webserver. There might be nothing wrong here, but looking to Ohio, and know the history of voting in Florida, this demands to be investigated.

FL Election Night results also hosted by external IT provider? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

Super Sleuth Award! (5.00 / 3) (#1)

Keep up the good work!

by roxy317 on Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 10:56:05 PM EST

Not sure it is front page worthy (5.00 / 3) (#2)

I haven't come to any conclusions if there is any story here. It appears every state might be doing this non-sense. There are better IT solutions for large internet traffic, but I guess every state decided to outsource election results.

I don't think what other states did changed the Ohio story, but it is frightening what States have been doing with computers and elections. I also do not think these outsourcing contracts are automatically suspect.

It turns out NIC Tech runs the State of Michigan election results (miboecfr.nictusa.com) and the FEC "Campaign Finance Reports and Data" website (query.nictusa.com)

NIC Technologies NLG-NICT-249-16 216.183.249.16 - 216.183.249.23
miboecfr.nictusa.com (216.183.249.18)

NIC Technologies is a pretty large company with public stock listing, and also Defense Dept contracts.

by intranets on Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 02:17:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

: It's a substantially different thing to consider (5.00 / 2) (#3)

when the person who owns the company that played a major role in programming the delivery of those results is also the person whose other company has helped put 3 Bushes into Executive offices.
And he was doing so at exactly the same time as his work product for the co-chairman of the Ohio Bush-Cheney Committee (aka Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell) delivered the results showing John Kerry's apparent loss to the world in real time.
If the same happened elsewhere, it has yet to be documented. But, I know that you'll remember it was exactly this record of the IP address shift recorded by Netcraft for Ohio's server that promted us to monitor and record Ohio's election process of 2006.
And we did all that without access to any realtime inside monitoring programs or probing equipment.
It's amazing what motivated citizens can accomplish, isn't it?!

by luaptifer on Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 07:18:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]