Photo: CBS 12
Reaction from the Republican Party of Florida to the arrest of an election volunteer in Palm Beach County for the theft of sensitive computer equipment.
John Panicci is accused of stealing an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal during a training session at the Supervisor of Elections Office.
The session was held just five days before a special election that resulted in a Florida House District that includes Mar-a-Lago flipped from Republican to Democrat hands.
The Florida GOP issued a statement on social media, calling the situation “potential corruption in a razor-thin election.” Emily Gregory won by under 800 votes. The statement says the party will be "closely monitoring every development to ensure complete accountability and protect the integrity of our elections."
Investigators say the key was configured for training databases only, but officials raise concerns that someone with technical knowledge could potentially reverse engineer the encryption and use it in a live voter registration system for malicious purposes.