The Sarasota Triangle: Why America Needs to Examine the Election in Florida's 13th District

[Wilms]

The Sarasota Triangle: Why America Needs to Examine the Election in Florida's 13th District

Once Again, Election Officials Blame the Voters and Defend the Machines

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA

November 12, 2006

The reported results in the race to determine who will serve the citizens of Florida’s 13th District pose questions that strike at the core of debate over the merit of computerized voting systems. A recount is inevitable given Republican Vern Buchanan’s razor thin margin of 368 votes over Democrat Christine Jennings. But a ‘recount’ will not answer the serious questions that the results raise.

The exquisitely gerrymandered 13th District lies south of Tampa and is dominated by Sarasota and Manatee Counties. The media has noted the inexplicably high under vote rate in Sarasota, with most reports citing a rate of over 13%. According to the reported results over 18,362 of the Sarasotans that voted in this election were unconcerned about who would represent them in the 110th Congress.

But it’s actually much worse than most of the media is reporting. The actual under vote in the precincts is 16.17%. The reason the media is reporting 13% is they do not know that the under votes on absentee (paper) ballots is 2.6%. The average (weighted for the greater number of precinct votes) for both absentee ballots and precinct votes is 13%. Absentee voters in Sarasota County voted on paper ballots counted by optical scanners while those who voted at early voting centers and at polling places on Election Day voted on ES&S iVotronic touchscreen voting machines.

snip

The fact that the under vote is 2.6% for absentee ballots reveals the falacy of the argument that the race was very ugly, turning off voters, thus a whole bunch of people did not vote in the race. How can it be that the nasty campaign only affected voters who voted on touch screen voting machines and not their neighbors that voted on paper? (And it can’t be explained away by any late and particularly vicious ads, since voters were early voting – or 'not voting' according to the results – for two weeks before the election on the touch screen machines as well.)

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2025&Itemid=113

-on edit-

Interactive Undervote map Jennings vs. Buchanan, Sarasota FL

Posted by graywarrior

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2962969

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?CATEGORY=Election03

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Great post. It lays out the case very concisely. K&R

[philb]

11. Does anyone know if the vote totals include provisionals? have they been counted?

I assume that if a winner was declared in D13 then provisionals must have already been counted.
In other states where winners have not been declared they are still waiting to count the provisionals,
and maybe absentees in some cases. Since there was only about 368 votes difference here, provisionals could have made a difference in these totals.

If provisionals have been counted, does anyone know how many there were and how many were rejected?
has anyone looked at this? In many races in 2004 there were huge numbers of provisionals, and how they are treated would affect the winner.

In 2004 in Florida there was a huge effort to exclude minority votes by manipulation of provisionals.
There were widespread illegal dirty tricks telling minority voters the wrong precinct number, in conjunction with a new rule that if they vote in the wrong precinct their vote doesn't count. There also appeared to be considerable malfeasance and misfeasance in this regard, losing huge numbers of minority votes.

[texpatriot2004]

2. Kick it for FL nm

[mcg]

3. If you can donate ...

see this thread

FLA Dems need cash NOW to help with legal battle re: Harris's (former) seat - donate now!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2950989

[Maraya1969]

4. Florida's voting results have seemed to me to be the big voter glitch

in the country. Is there a way I can see the possible under votes on an amendment? I still find it hard to believe that #3 was passed.

[OnTheOtherHand]

9. sort of

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarchive/enight.asp has the summary totals for the amendments. Click on each amendment 'title' to get totals by county. That doesn't give you undervotes, but if you then follow the "voter turnout" link at left, you can get total votes per county.

Given that none of the amendment votes seemed very close, I wouldn't expect that undervotes would alter any results.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Because corruption is endemic in Florida's culture and you've got

to start somewhere?

[philb]

7. I suspect you'l find some disagreement about your Florida culture statement

I'm from Florida and don't think the culture in my area is any worse than anywhere else I've been.
But the problem is that the politics is controled by a click that has almost absolute political power, fed by lots of money contributions. And the avaiability of touch screens is the same in all states. There is just a combination of total control of elections in most areas of the state by one party that has been able to do process wise just about what ever they want to do, since the leadership of the Dem party has been very weak.
Even though there are more Dem voters than Repub. But the fact that corporations with political ties control the elections in Florida and many other states also makes it easier to manipulate votes.
I guess you are talking about the dominant political culture rather than other aspects of the Florida culture.

[philb]

6. Florida had the highest rate of touch screen switching in 2004 and the most switched votes

reported by voters to the EIRS system. They had lots of switching from Kerry to Bush and Castor to Martinez,
but also had switching to blank like the voters in Sarasota reported for Dist 13. They voted Jennings, then for
those who looked at the review screen, the Jennings vote had disappeared. This is called delayed switch to blank, and
commonly happened on Broward county touch screens in 2004 and likewise on Mahanoning Co. Ohio, as can be seen in the EIRS reports filled out by voters in 2004.
www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html
www.flcv.com/ohiosum.html

But there also seems to have been a separate and different problem for some voters.
A poll worker in Sarasota D13 also noted that some of the voters there also had a "butterfly ballot" design similar to the one that switched thousands of votes from Gore in 2000 in Duval and Palm Beach counties.
The Congressional race was on page 1 but only Buchanan showed up there. The name Jennings was in small print on page 2 but with no Cong. race context there. Many voters reported that they never saw Jennings name to vote for.
Since this design is well known and highly publicized and obviously has an extreme bias, one would think that it would have not been approved by the SOE and SOS, but maybe like in 2000 it served its purpose. Which was not to give fair results.

[rumpel]

12. Who is the printing co?

just curious

[autorank]

8. K&R Florida is where its at now that Ohio has been freed.

Ohio was the #1 banana republic under Taft, Petro and whats-his-name;). Now they're free. Ted Strickland is a decent man and Attorney General Dann will acquit himself well. I couldn't be
happier for the very fine people of Ohio on this service and those I had the honor of meeting at
"We Count" in Cleveland in September.

Now it's free Florida time. Jeb needs to go the path of his brother. The new governor is vulnerable and there will be a shift locally then in the state legislature. Free Florida!

[philb]

10. undervotes in Hillsboro Co- in same gen area and uses touch screens- much lower than CD13

Hillsboro County
elec day absentee
undervotes undervotes
U.S. Sen 1.78% 1.10%
Cong D9 4.32% 1.71% Bilirakis/Busansky
Cong D11 4.54% 2.88% Adams/Castor

Governor 0.56% 1.00%
CFO 3.94% 4.78%
At. Gen. 3.35% 3.26%
Ag. Comm. 4.84% 4.67% (not a very serious race/very one sided)

[philb]

13. Lots of cases of TS switch to blank(undervotes) reported in Florida,Ohio,Calif,etc. in 2004

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=457470&mesg_id=457470

Touch Screen Switching to Blank cases reported by voters in several counties in Florida, as well as in Ohio, Calif, etc.

[Awsi Dooger]

14. In Nevada I intentionally skipped three races and the machine hated it

That's the aspect that puzzles me regarding FL-13. Many voters indicate they didn't catch the missing congressional vote until the review screen. On the Sequoia system I used here it warned me multiple times with bright yellow boxes that I hadn't voted in every race I was entitled to. Frankly, it was an annoyance. I skipped three minor nonpartisan races when my research indicated they were dueling Republicans.

Does anyone know if the Florida system similarly warns if a race is skipped? Obviously in this case the votes were checked initially but disappeared prior to the review screen. I'm not clear if the system lacked a warning, or if the machine bypassed the warning since a vote had been checked, perhaps not vanishing from memory until the review screen.