When over 18,400 ballots showed no vote in the 13th District race in Florida, the Republicans were quick to ignore statistical realities and allow the intent of the voters to be cast aside.
On December 29th, Judge William Gary followed suit. Ignoring statistical evidence from the nation's preeminent expert on undervotes, he ruled that there could be no independent audit of the touchscreen machines that registered the undervotes without evidence that the machines malfunctioned--evidence that by its very nature cannot be obtained without conducting an independent audit of the machines.
Today, we filed our appeal on behalf of the voiceless voters of Sarasota County.
From our appeal:
This is a rare election-contest case because it involves a race that wasn’t even close. According to experts for both sides in this case, about 3,000 more voters in Florida’s Thirteenth District intended to cast their ballots for congressional candidate Christine Jennings than for her opponent, Vern Buchanan.
But when all the votes were tallied, the official state certification showed Buchanan with a 369-vote winning margin. And it also showed 18,000 "undervotes" — 18,000 ballots with no vote for either congressional candidate — in Sarasota County, the epicenter of what had been one of the most hotly contested, high-profile U.S. House races in Florida’s history. Experts for both sides also agree that these undervotes were unintended, the unfortunate consequence of something that went very wrong with Sarasota County’s iVotronic electronic touch-screen voting system.
But there, the litigants and their respective experts part company. Jennings, the plaintiff below, contends that the electronic voting machines malfunctioned. Buchanan, one of the defendants, claims that it was the voters who malfunctioned. Jennings alleges that votes legally cast for one candidate or the other were rejected by the machines and misrecorded as undervotes, probably due to a software "bug" not unlike the programming glitches people routinely encounter on their home or office computers. Buchanan alleges that voters, particularly Sarasota’s senior citizens, never actually cast their intended congressional votes, as they simply overlooked Jennings’s and Buchanan’s names on the electronic touch-screens, and then overlooked the race again when they got to the summary screen at the end of the ballot, and then missed the warning, in bright red letters, saying "No Selection Made."
To prove her case, Jennings moved to compel state and county election
officials to produce components of Sarasota’s iVotronic system, so that her own computer-science experts could examine and test them. Defendants, exhibiting a disturbing lack of confidence in their own election technology and an even more disturbing lack of concern for the public’s trust in our democratic processes, have thrown up the "trade-secret privilege," claiming that Jennings’s discovery requests represent a grave threat to the reputation and business interests of the iVotronic system’s manufacturer, Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S), a privately held corporation.
So when the choice came down to protecting the voters of the 13th District and the integrity of our elections system, or protecting the corporate profits of ES&S, Judge Gary chose to throw out the right of Sarasotans to vote.
That is unacceptable, period.
We are not giving up because the right to vote in fair elections, and to have that vote accurately recorded and counted, is sacrosanct in this country. Some seem to have tragically forgotten that--including some who would seek to serve as the People's representative. But the purpose of a Representative is to speak for the People when their voices are silenced. Hundreds of Sarasotans have filed sworn affadavits attesting to the machine malfunctions they themselves witnessed and they are being silenced. When over 18,000 voices were silenced in Novemeber, it was Christine who raised her voice to protect and defend theirs. If that doesn't epitomize the ideals of our representative democracy, I don't know what does.
We're fighting to end the secrecy surrounding our system of voting, because transparency in government is an anathema to corruption, and is an essential component of a free society. And it is a hard fight, without question. And we need your help to continue this fight. If you can contribute, please do. And please, write or call your Representative and ask that they not forget the voters of Sarasota County.
We're not giving up this fight--the People's rights are too important to cast aside as lightly as some have done. However long it takes, we will continue to demand answers and accountability.
The People of the 13th District deserve no less from their chosen Representative.
Sincerely,
JR Lentini
Blogosphere Outreach Coordinator
Christine Jennings for Congress
P.S.- Christine wants me to share this message for the New Year with the dKos Community:
First, let me say Happy New Year to each of you and your families. I thank you for your support over the past year, and look forward to continuing to work together in 2007.
As we enter the New Year, I hope that you will all join me in resolving to restore confidence in our voting system.
Last week, the judge in Tallahassee ruled to deny access by independent experts to the ES&S voting machines and source code.
It's shocking that there is more concern for protecting a company's profits rather than protecting our right to vote. The secrecy and question marks surrounding electronic voting is creating a real crisis in confidence among America's voters, and the only way to resolve this is by conducting a thorough review by outside experts.
We are appealing this ruling, and I am confident that we will receive the type of review that is necessary to determine what went wrong in our election.
This week, a new Congress will convene in Washington. While I continue our fight to find the truth about what went wrong with Sarasota’s voting system, I believe it is important that our district have representation in Washington. That is why I have welcomed the U.S. House of Representatives to seat my opponent while the election contest continues.
As Representative Rush Holt made clear last week, the seating of my opponent does not in any way impact our election contest or the potential for a revote which I feel is essential to ensuring that our Representative is chosen by the will of the people.
In this New Year, I will continue to fight for fair and accurate elections, and hope that each of you will join me in restoring faith in our democracy.
Sincerely,
Christine Jennings