Yes, there's another stolen election in Florida, KKKatherine Harris' old seat, FL-13..... seems 18,000 voters (13%) in Sarasota County declined to vote for their new congress-critter...
Dist. 13 voting analysis shows broad problem
A review of Sarasota County voting results shows that in almost every precinct a high percentage of voters didn't cast ballots in the hotly contested 13th Congressional District, a trend that likely affected the outcome of the race. Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country. More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.
That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate... -- a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.
If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to a Herald-Tribune review. Even if the undervote had been 8 percent -- more than three times what it was in Manatee -- Jennings would have won by one vote.... (read the whole article)
The news is all over the
blogosphere and has broken into the
corporatist media. Latest news via
Muckraker, SoE Dent is asking for a state audit, even though the Sec. of State has previously
refused to investigate...
Dent asks state to audit election
Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent has asked the Florida Department of State to audit Tuesday's election after the recounts are completed. In the 13th Congressional District, Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest Congressional race in the country. More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race. "Because of the hullabaloo and the focus on this race, I just think it's a good idea to have this audit," Dent said. "They would look at everything ... soup to nuts." Dent is spending the morning planning the logistics of the recount, expected to occur Monday. She made a request to the Secretary of State, who is sending workers down to observe and help with the recount.
We also now have Congressional staffers on hand to oversee the scheduled Monday recount, an effort that is an exercise in futility since there aren't any ballots to recount from the Diebold touch-screen electronic voting machines. This one's headed to a court fight...
U.S. House staffers arrive for 13th District recount
Staff from the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees election disputes visited the site Friday where the 13th Congressional District race will be recounted. Janelle Hu for the Democratic party and David Kavanaugh for the Republican party, staff members of the Committee on House Administration, who plan to be there for the recount on Monday. On Friday, they inspected the touchscreen voting machines with Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent.
The staffers asked questions about the security of the machines and other voting equipment and how voters were instructed on using the machines. They tried out the touchscreen machines in Dent’s office, finding out what the machine did in all sorts of senarios, such as when someone undervoted or wanted to correct their vote. Dent also showed them how the Christine Jennings-Vern Buchanan race looked on every ballot type used in the election.
According to
Muckraker, the new Democratic majority in the US House could step in, too...
House could end up in the 13th District
There was talk of mandatory recounts and possible court challenges Wednesday following Vern Buchanan's narrow victory in the 13th Congressional District race, but the ultimate arbiter in the dispute could be House-Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat-controlled U.S. House. While Buchanan declared victory by 368 votes, Democrat Christine Jennings refused to concede defeat.
"Sarasota voters have been victimized by not having their vote count," Jennings said Wednesday, vowing that her campaign would "not rest until every vote is counted."
But recounts involving touch-screen systems, which lack a paper trail, are usually inconclusive, so this case could be headed for the courts, said Chris Sautter, a Democratic recount expert. It would be "extraordinarily rare" for a court to order a new election even if the Jennings camp makes a convincing case that enough votes weren't counted to make a difference in the outcome, Sautter said.
But a strong court case could pave the way for the incoming Democratic House to step in, since the U.S. Constitution makes the House the final arbiter in House races, he said. Congress has gotten involved twice in tight races, both involving Democrats being seated over Republican protests.
"We're been watching this closely in Sarasota," said Lowell Finley, co-director and legal director for Voter Action, a national group formed in 2005 to challenge cases of voter fraud caused by electronic voting machines. "The results are extremely irregular and the fact that a large number of votes don't seem to be counted in just one race on these electronic machines is a very suspicious circumstance. We don't think the official results are accurate by any means."... (full article)
