Reply #10: OpEdNews: Wrong Winner Chosen Twice by Same Voting Machine [View All]

[freedomfries]

Wrong Winner Chosen Twice by Same Voting Machine

Michael Collins
OpEdNews.com
January 15, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070115_wrong_winner_chosen_.htm
Re-post
:patriot:

The Election Contest filed by Democrat Christine Jennings and her attorney Kendall Coffey creates complications that could blow the electronic voting world to pieces. In the simplest terms, the Jennings Florida 13th Congressional district case requires a review of the Kissell loss in North Carolina's 8th Congressional district. And that spells disaster for e-voting.

Why? Because both the Florida and North Carolina districts used iVotronics touch screen voting machines. These voting machines produced very similar levels of counting errors. The errors cost both Democrats thousands of votes. Ultimately, both Democratic candidates were denied a victory by less than 400 votes.

While Jennings makes a very strong case for a voided election and new vote in Florida, the case becomes virtually unassailable when reviewing results from North Carolina. At the same time, the North Carolina 8th results, reviewed in the context of the election contest analysis of Florida's 13th, makes it abundantly clear that the loser, Kissell, should have won in almost any scenario other than voting machine malfunction.

In both districts, the iVotronic touch screen voting machines produced undervote rates at or above 15%. What this means is that supposedly one in seven voters cast ballots but left out a choice for the most important election (an unmarked race on an otherwise marked ballot is called an undervote). The only culprit in both the Florida 13th and North Carolina 8th elections is voting machine malfunction. The facts supporting the case for losers winning don't allow for much debate in these Florida and North Carolina races. They're simple and a review leads to conclusions that devastate any trust in electronic voting.

The Florida election contest brief filed in Congress looks at data within the 13th Congressional district and data from other Florida districts. Coffey notes that the undervote rate in Sarasota County is six times the undervote rate in surrounding counties in the same district. How did that happen? These are contiguous counties and part of the same congressional district.

Coffey performs a rhetorical slam dunk by looking at undervotes for the two types of early voting in Sarasota County. Early voting by mail required voters to mark their choices on optical scan paper ballots then mail the ballots to the elections board where they were totaled using optical scan readers. Mail in early voting undervotes were at 2.6%. In person early voters came to central locations and voted on iVotronic touch screens like those used in the general election. Undervotes by that method ran 17.6%. There is no reason for a difference of 15 points other than the one provided by Coffey in the Jennings case: voting machine malfunction by the iVotronics. As a result, 14,000 Sarasota County voters lost their constitutional rights. The election should be voided and a new one held.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070115_wrong_winner_chosen_.htm