Via Political Wire, we just got screwed again.
“Florida election officials announced yesterday that an examination of voting software did not find any malfunctions that could have caused up to 18,000 votes to be lost in a disputed Congressional race in Sarasota County, and they suggested that voter confusion over a poor ballot design was mainly to blame,” reports the New York Times.
“The finding, reached unanimously by a team of computer experts from several universities, could finally settle last fall’s closest federal election. The Republican candidate, Vern Buchanan, was declared the winner by 369 votes, but the Democrat, Christine Jennings, formally contested the results, claiming that the touch-screen voting machines must have malfunctioned.”
However, the St. Petersburg Times notes Jennings vowed “to continue seeking access to the source code so they can conduct their own reviews. Jennings’ campaign described the study as flawed and incomplete, and said that experts were not allowed full access to the machines.”
Was this a fair investigation?
“It’s unfortunate that the state’s election officials were more concerned about sweeping the problem under the rug than finding out the truth about what went wrong with Sarasota County’s voting system,” Jennings spokesman David Kochman said…
“This audit is a whitewash,” People for the American Way Foundation president Ralph Neas said. “It is the result of a flawed process overseen by people with a stake in the outcome, and it will not be the last word on this matter.”
Juanita Millender-McDonald (DEM-CA-37th), the chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, may order a further investigation, and Jennings still has an appeal to the ruling in the works. But it looks like Jennings got rooked out of a seat in Congress through some kind of computer malfunction. Hiding 18,000 missing votes behind proprietary source code is totally unacceptable.
