Posted on 11/30/2006 11:16:28 AM PST by Omega Man II
State: Errors in disputed election test result of human mistakes
By STEPHEN MAJORS Associated Press Writer
November 30. 2006 2:03PM
Discrepancies in the first round of testing of Sarasota County's touch-screen voting machines were the result of human error, not problems with the devices, state elections officials said Thursday about the audit in a disputed congressional race.
The testing is in the contest between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings, who trails by a slim difference that she said was caused by machines losing thousands of votes. Tuesday's test used scripts telling mock voters who to choose, in an attempt to see if the machines accurately record votes.
The test results didn't match the scripts in five cases in the District 13 congressional race, out of 251 ballots cast. But all five discrepancies were because mock voters didn't correctly follow the instructions on the scripts, said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb.
"It's exactly as we expected," she said, adding that the errors were caught in a review of videotape footage of the audit.
The four machines tested so far were not used on Election Day. Officials will begin an audit of machines used on Election Day on Friday.
Sarasota County's elections chief requested the tests to determine if the machines malfunctioned, a move Jennings supported. The county's machines had more than 18,000 ballots without a choice in the Jennings-Buchanan race on Election Day. That undervote rate was significantly higher than the district's other counties.
Because Buchanan's lead is just 369 votes and Jennings beat him about 53 percent to 47 percent in Sarasota County, she argued that undervotes there cost her the race.
As Election Day has been followed by a string of recounts and audits, Buchanan has moved forward as the congressman-elect.
But Jennings has refused to concede. In a legal challenge filed last week, her attorneys included accounts of voters who said the machines did not correctly record their votes.
Jennings spokeswoman Kathy Vermazen said Thursday that state's findings confirm "the need for an independent audit."
Buchanan's campaign called again for Jennings to concede, saying it was a fair election.
"Her unfounded claims of a breakdown in the voting machines are completely discredited," said Buchanan spokeswoman Sally Tibbetts.
Said Jennings: "Not it wasn't a fair election because I had the stupid voters. If they had any basic comprehension, they would have correctly cast their ballots for me, therefore I win hands down!"
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Let Freedom Ring,
Let the Dems run to court and argue that all the stupid and confused voters were obviously Dems, who intended to vote for their candidate.
LOL.
If they thought they could win with that argument, I promise you, they would do it in a heart beat. Just win baby.
Or 18,000 voters did not care which of the two candidates won. I do not vote all the places on my ballot if I do not know who the candidates are, like Fire Marshall or Water District Management personnel. It would be intersting to see if the number of undervotes were about the same for other races in that district............
Yes, and if the AP reporter had an honest bone in his body he'd report the fact that in the 2000 congressional election, the undervote was 2% higher than what it was in 2006. This is about nothing more than stealing an election and Jennings is showing her true character....or lack thereof.
Because Buchanan's lead is just 369 votes and Jennings beat him about 53 percent to 47 percent in Sarasota County.
This stat is very concerning to me. That this county would choose a hard core liberal, masquerading as a fiscal conservative by this margin is a sad commentary on the state of politics in this county. Vern will have his hands full again in two years because this bitter woman (Jennings) isn't going to go away.
The Dems did this in 1984, after a disputed Indiana House election. The Dems ignored the certified vote count, and seated the losing candidate. There was an uproar over this, but the guy they seated was still re-elected in the following election year.
"Yes, and if the AP reporter had an honest bone in his body he'd report the fact that in the 2000 congressional election, the undervote was 2% higher than what it was in 2006."
Experts: 15% undervote in 2000 isn't comparable
Our local Pravda, The Herald Tribune, did report on this even though they did everything they could to explain the facts away. The fact is, there is historical precedent for a large percentage of undervote in this district. The 2006 race featured a highly adversarial primary on the Republican side and a very nasty general election. I think a lot of people just said no to voting either way on the race because it had become so vitriolic.
The placement of the the congressional race on the ballot was less than optimal but at each voting place every voter was admonished to pay very careful attention to the congressional race. This is sour grapes once again for the dems who lost by a narrow margin. If Jennings persists, she'll lose the large amount of goodwill she garnered from more independent minded voters in the district who bought into her claims of being of solid character, unlike Vern, and for practicing fiscal conservatism. Rats are rats. As she is so clearly proving.
I think the set-up of the computer voting was the main reason for the undervote, but that is far different from the computer malfunction alleged by the Democrats. If Democrats are too stupid to scroll down to find the House race, that's their own damn fault. Whether it is black Democrats in Seminole County who couldn't figure out that the presidential candidates were spread over two pages, Jewish Democrats in Palm Beach County who voted for Buchanan because they couldn't follow the arrow protruding from Gore's name on the butterfly ballot, or retiree Democrats in Sarasota County who "couldn't find" the House race on the electronic voting machine and decided not to tell anyone until they found out the Republican had won by a few hundred votes, it seems that Florida Democrats are just too stupid to vote.
It's a little scary that, in a test where people were told exactly what to do, and you have to assume they were being paid and had no reason to rush, that FIVE of them out of 251 were unable to follow the directions correctly.
That's a 2% margin of error.
It's not unreasonable to assume that this error could be expected in a real election, meaning that 2% of the people using the touch machines might make an error.
// Feds Collect Giant Rats in Florida
(Nov. 30) - As the rising sun danced across Florida's coastal waters, government workers in shorts and T-shirts knelt in a grassy island field and plucked wriggling rats from traps laid the night before. These weren't just any rats. They were 3-pound, 35-inch-long African behemoths. They squirmed as the workers, wearing protective gloves, removed green radio collars that had been tracking the rodents' movements. //
H'mm.
It is a set up to win the election by being able to claim "machine error" Notice that the machine error claims by these "democrats" went away everywhere but with this ditz.
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