As we noted yesterday, the state’s first run of tests on electronic voting machines in Florida’s Sarasota County unexpectedly handed five extra votes to Democrat Christine Jennings.
Since then, the Division of Elections has been busily trying to figure out what went wrong. But despite a full day of analysis that did not explain the discrepancy, the department’s spokesperson is still insisting that “human error” is to blame. They just need more time to figure out how.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that whatever problems caused electronic machines not to register a vote in the congressional race for more than 18,000 voters in the county on Election Day, the problem affected Democrats more than Republicans.
From The Orlando Sentinel:
…Tuesday, Stanford University professor David Dill said his examination of ballot data supported that conclusion.
Dill, an electronic-voting expert, found that 5,304 people whose ballots showed no selection in the congressional race voted a straight Democratic ticket on the five statewide races. He found that 3,290 voted straight Republican. [Republican Vern Buchanan won the official tally by fewer than 400 votes.]
“Something’s going on there,” Dill said. “But I’m not sure what yet.”
