Unwilling to wait for the courts to rule on the disputed Sarasota elections, a key member of the U.S. Senate is launching an investigation into the 13th Congressional District race.U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she will ask the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct a “top-to-bottom investigation” to determine what caused 18,000 Sarasota County undervotes in the race for Congress.
A GAO investigation could definitely lap the current court case brought by Dem Christine Jennings. Right now, we’re still waiting on an appeal of the trial court judge’s ruling that Jennings can’t get review ES&S‘s voting machine source code. At first I thought we’d find out this month, but now Jennings’ lawyers are saying we won’t hear any earlier than March.
But with Feinstein’s newly aggressive posture, we might not even have to wait on the appeals process: The Senate can issue subpoenas to crack this stubborn nut open. Then the real fun begins.
P.S. It’s also notable that this pressure is coming from the Senate, rather than the House, which has said it prefers to wait until the court case runs its course. My sense, based on tiny hints in the article linked above, is that the Senate has a freer hand here, since (as Feinstein is doing) it can frame the issue as purely one of election integrity, rather than appearing to try to increase its majority by an extra seat.
(Thanks to ca democrat.)
I believe we should definitely find this undercount voting problems source…
Glad we are being bold and taking a stand.
my Senator did something I agree with.
The Florida Secretary of State’ report blamed “human error” and a poorly designed ballot in Sarasota County that split the House vote into two pages with a header for the Governor’s race highlighted and placed below a place to vote for an unspecified candidate (presumably Christine Jennings). Florida specifically absolves ES&S based on pretty slim “investigation.”
Why do “butterfly ballots” only seem to cost Democrats? Why do the local election commissioners have the authority to use misleading ballots with no review by either the state or independent reviewers?
The percentage of undervotes dropped from 2% in 2000 to 0.41% statewide in 2004. This year, the statewide percentage increased by 139% to 0.98%. The official response is that the error rate was higher on absentee ballots and higher on US Senate ballots. OR, (unstated but clear), voters undervoted because Katherine Harris is a schmuck. It doesn’t explain why undervotes, for example were a lot worse in a congressional election or why results (as in 2000) varied widely from county to county.
Florida needs some system changes. Florida needs a paper backup to any voting system. And, incentives that reward cheating and deception need to be eliminated. Yes, thousands of voters were purged in 2000. Did anybody pay a penalty for that? Did anybody serve hard time, and meaninful hard time, for the “Brooks Brothers riot.”
She also is a driving force into investigating the recent firing of all those non-theo/neo federal attorneys by Attorney General Gonzalez.
Go Diane Go!