Why Congress should declare Jennings winner in Florida Dist13 race and investigate official malfeasa

[philb]

nce

Analysis/Audit/Affidavits of Voters showed likely machine manipulation or malfunction, as well as obvious faulty screen layout/ballot design that was biased to result in making the race harder to find/see in Jennings home area. Large numbers of voters, backed up by poll workers, described "disappearing votes" or that they could not find the race on their ballot. www.flcv.com/sarasot6.html

48 precincts had undervotes of over 20% during early voting, and 20 precincts had over 20% undervotes on election day. An additional 54 precincts had undervotes over 15% in early voting and 36 more on election day. 65% of precincts in early voting had undervotes over 15%.

Knowledgeable experts virtually all agree that it is extremely unlikely that the majority of these voters whose votes were not recorded intentionally failed to vote in this race. They also virtually all agree that these high undervotes were not likely caused by the faulty layout alone, but rather that there was likely machine error or manipulation.

An analysis using conservative assumptions shows Jennings was almost surely the preferred candidate by majority of voters and would have won the race except for machine error/manipulation

The analysis assumes 2.5% intentional undervotes in each precinct,

with surplus undervotes in each precinct beyond 2.5% spread the same as the Jennings and Buchanan vote percent in that precinct.

Under these assumptions, this results in a net additional 1103 Jennings votes and Jennings winning by over 665 votes.

The assumptions appear conservative based on undervotes on absentee ballots in Sarasota and in general for Dist 13 in neighboring Manatee County.

Also based on the fact that all reported disappearing votes were by Democratic voters, and the audit confirmed that a substantial majority of the voters with undervotes were predominantly Democratic voting voters.

spread sheet with analysis: www.flcv.com/d13panal.html

It appears that there was malfeasance and/or misfeasance by the Supervisor of Elections and poll workers regarding the clearly faulty ballot design and failure to warn voters adequately of the problems that voters were having in voting on this race. Large numbers of voters have indicated there was little if any warning regarding the problems that were being encountered and were known about from early voting experience. On some screens the District 13 race was on the same page as the Governors race which had more candidates and was highlighted, while the District 13 race was smaller and not highlighted- easy to overlook. Some voters described an even more problematic screen layout- some saying after looking for it they could not find the race at all and some saying their screen had a butterfly ballot design with the race listed on one page with Buchanan only and Jennings name listed alone on a 2nd page with no race indicated. People involved with the audit say there was more than one screen layout used, but authorities never allowed obvious and simple task of looking at each screen layout to see what the design/layout on the various machines was.

Authorities also never made a serious effort to determine what was causing the disappearing Jennings votes on the most problematic machines. It is highly likely that the machines that had undervotes over 20% had ballot definition file errors/manipulation or programming errors/manipulation that was causing the disappearing votes. The same problem has been described by voters and poll workers in many other races where touch screen machines were used in 2004 and 2006. Experts/programmers that looked at the results are in general agreement that the type of problem described by voters and poll workers was likely caused by problems with the ballot definition files or related programming of the particular machines that had disappearing votes and high undervotes. Authorities never allowed those machines to have their ballot definition files or the related programming that compiled votes checked, even though most knowledgeable experts thought that checking these would determine the reason for the disappearing votes.

Programmer/Engineer
Nonpartisan Election Protection Volunteer for several years monitoring election irregularities

[Stevepol]

1. K&R

[ChiciB1]

2. Not The Least Of Which... She Polled AHEAD In This County

from the get go!! It was ALWAYS her county out of the 5! I worked with the campaign before and after and here we are in JANUARY.... and it's still the same old crap! They KNEW she was going to win and THEY fixed it! I AM SURE OF IT!! I live here and they make me SICK!!

[bleever]

3. Up to the Greatest.

Thanks, philb.

[AikidoSoul]

4. If she doesn't win this case -- this issue will die a horrible death

E-voting has so many flaws that any idiot can see why this sytem has to change. If she doesn't win her legal case, and/or if this issue isn't decided fairly in the U.S. Congress -- the setback to verifiable (paper ballots withOUT computers) -- will be horrific.