Lawyers for Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings threw down the gauntlet yesterday, asking a state court to secure electronic voting machines and data used in the election.
The move would preserve the equipment in Florida’s Sarasota County for scrutiny by Jennings’ legal team. A hearing on the suit is scheduled for this afternoon.
It’s just the first step of what is likely to be a litigious aftermath to a close and ugly election (thanks in part to the NRCC’s rampant robo calling in the district). The state began a recount and audit of the election yesterday. Once the audit and second recount is completed and the results certified on November 20th, the Jennings campaign has ten days to contest the results of the election if they still show Jennings down. Before the recounting began, she was down 386 votes.
The fight will center around the district’s Sarasota County, where the electronic machines did not register a vote in the Congressional race for 18,000 voters (13%) — what’s called an “undervote.” That’s compared to only 2.53% of voters who did not vote in the race via absentee ballots.
A study by the local paper, The Herald Tribune, found that one in three of Sarasota election officials “had general complaints from voters about having trouble getting votes to record” on the electronic machines for the Congressional race. Since 53% of voters in Sarasota County picked Jennings over the Republican Vern Buchanan, those missed votes would likely have put Jennings in front.
Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for the Jennings campaign, told me yesterday that any court challenge of the results is likely to focus on problems with the electronic machines. He said that the campaign has a wealth of “compelling testimony” from “sources that you simply can’t discredit” who had trouble registering a vote for Jennings in the county. That challenge would likely come later in the month, if the recount still shows Jennings down and the state’s audit does not turn up any problems. So stay tuned.
Update: The judge granted the Jennings campaign request to secure the voting machines today.
