Florida’s 13 District is fast turning into that recount battle that everyone knew would be coming in this, the year of the electronic voting machine. Despite a new analysis that shows the Democrat may have narrowly lost the official count due to glitches in the machines, the Floridia Secretary of State is refusing to investigate the issue.
As we noted yesterday, according to the official count Republican Vern Buchanan edged out Democrat Christine Jennings by only 368 votes — but there seems to have been a huge voting problem in one county, where electronic machines registered no votes for the contentious congressional race from a large number of voters. That glitch apparently cost Jennings the race, and the fight seems sure to head to the courts (both sides have their legal teams in place).
As The Herald Tribune reports, there was a 13 percent “undervote” for the Buchanan-Jennings race in Sarasota County (meaning they registered 13 percent fewer votes for that race than for the other big races) — far more than in other counties. And according to an analysis by the paper, “[i[f 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.” Jennings won 53 percent of the counted votes in the county.
Despite the fact that there was clearly a problem in the county — the Herald Tribune reports that they received complaints from “more than 120 Sarasota County voters” on Election Day — there’s resistance (surprise, surprise) from the Florida Secretary of State’s office to look into it:
“I’m not sure there’s even a problem,” said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State, who oversees elections. She said the office had not received a single complaint or contact about the race.
Nash repeated [Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy] Dent’s suggestion that voters may have intentionally decided not to vote in the congressional race.
“It could be a protest vote. There’s a lot of different reasons people undervote,” she said. “Certainly undervoting is the voter’s prerogative.”
Nash said no state investigation is planned.
Voter complaints in Sarasota County seem to fall into two categories. The first is simply that the race was laid out on the ballot in such a way that it was easy to overlook. That problem was even apparent in the early voting, causing the county’s Supervisor of Elections to send a notice to poll workers that the race was easy to miss. The second problem is that a number of voters have complained that they voted in the congressional race, but did not see their vote when the machine came to the review screen. The Herald Tribune has a great review of voter complaints here.
Next will come two mandated recounts, and after that, since the electronic machines have no paper trail, making a recount basically pointless, a court challenge seems assured. The newly Democratic House of Representatives could also step in to settle the dispute.
