Man Charged With Hacking FL Gov’s Voting Address

Fort Myers’ CBS News affiliate reports:

A 20-year-old Naples man was arrested Tuesday, accused of changing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ address in the voter database. DeSantis alerted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement after he went to vote Monday afternoon and was told that an unknown person had altered his primary address.

DeSantis said he didn’t authorize the change and contacted FDLE, which got in touch with Leon County’s Supervisor of Elections Office to request the logs for the date and time in which the suspect IP requested the change of the governor’s information.

Anthony Guevara faces a property crime charge as well as a charge of altering voter registration without consent. He was released Wednesday morning from the Collier County Jail on a $5,000 bond. Voter records show Guevara is a registered Republican.

NBC News reports:

Investigators spoke with Guevara who showed special agents how he was able to change the governor’s address. Guevara told investigators he went to the “Voter Information Lookup” section on the “dos.myflorida.com” website and entered Governor DeSantis’ first name, last name, and date of birth.

Investigators did not report how exactly Guevara changed the information. He said the address he changed the governor’s to was that of a YouTube personality in West Palm Beach.

Guevara also allegedly accessed voter information for Senator Rick Scott, as well as several celebrities including Michael Jordan and LeBron James, but he only changed DeSantis’ address.

From Florida’s secretary of state:

Our systems are secure. There has been no breach to the Florida Department of State’s systems. The Florida Department of State wants every voter to have confidence in the integrity of our elections network.

“This incident was perpetrated using publicly accessible voter data, and there is no evidence to suggest that this change was made through the Florida Department of State.

We commend the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on their swift action to bringing this malicious actor to justice. The situation was corrected immediately and the voter was able to cast a ballot.

DeSantis was temporarily unable to vote.