EXCLUSIVE: Screenshots of FL-13 Buchanan/Jennings Touch-Screen Ballot...

[BradBlog]

FULL STORY, SCREENSHOTS, COMPLETE NEWS RELEASE:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3821

EXCLUSIVE: Screenshots of the FL-13 Buchanan/Jennings Race as Seen on Sarasota's ES&S Touch-Screen Voting Machines on Election Day
ALSO: Non-Partisan Election Integrity Groups To Sue for Revote in U.S. House Race, Announce Press Conference (News Release Posted Here in Full)

Screenshots from the much-discussed first two pages of Sarasota, Florida's ballot as seen on the paperless ES&S touch-screens on November 7th, 2006 are now available at the URL listed below.

Some 18,000 voters did not register a vote in the 13th Congressional district race between Christine Jennings and Vern Buchanan. Or at least, the ES&S voting machines failed to register their vote in any case.

Several non-partisan Election Integrity groups will be filing suit tomorrow in Florida to call for a re-vote in the election. The public-interest watchdog groups claim that voters were disenfranchised by the thousands in the race due to poor ballot design and a faulty voting system. A press conference tomorrow has been scheduled for Tuesday at 1pm ET on the steps of the Sarasota County Courthouse (the news release announcing the presser is posted in full at the end of this article.)

A lawsuit contesting the results of the election was filed this morning by Jennings and, as The BRAD BLOG reported earlier today, Buchanan held a press conference this morning in which he called on Jennings to "stop listening" to the Election Integrity groups which he says "have hijacked the election." (Full video, transcript here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3820)

Buchanan's call for Jennings to concede comes despite the 18,000 lost votes and the microscopic 367 vote margin between the two of them as reported in the now-officially certified results.

Full-sized screenshots of the complete ballot can be downloaded at the URL below . Screenshotsof the first two pages, resized to fit on The BRAD BLOG — where the Jennings/Buchanan race can be seen spilling spill over to the second page of the "ballot", above the more clearly defined "STATE" races are at the URL below.

The news release on tomorrow's press conference to announce a lawsuit by a number of non-partisan Election Integrity organizations is also posted at the following URL in full…

FULL STORY, SCREENSHOTS, COMPLETE NEWS RELEASE:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3821

---
Brad Friedman
THE BRAD BLOG - The uprising continues...
http://www.BradBlog.com
VELVET REVOLUTION's Election Protection Strike Force!
Of the people, by the people, for the people...
http://www.VelvetRevolution.us/ElectionStrikeForce

[stop the bleeding]

1. and the band marches on

thanks BB for keeping in the loop :thumbsup:

[Sydnie]

2. Good work Brad

As usual.

I hope she wins her law suit for a revote!

[Canuckistanian]

3. Thanks Brad.

It's a wonder this stuff isn't frontpage news.

Good work, as always.

:thumbsup:

[mom cat]

4. A smoking gun! Keep up the good work! The only good DRE

is a dead one!

[Gelliebeans]

5. A big K&R

[MoonRiver]

6. Thanks!!

I hope she gets the re-vote, and that re-votes become routine in this country. It should have happened in 2000. :mad:

[SeattleGirl]

7. Holy shite, Brad!

Not only is Jennings' name on the page 2 "spill-over", but it is LAST, and it also comes AFTER the write-in choice, which, on every ballot I've ever voted on, is the last thing listed. How much more blatant can this be? I'm glad Jennings is suing, as are the other groups. I know they are calling her a "sore loser" (what's new, huh?), but so what? Voter-verified paper ballots have got to be the norm in this country, and these machines should be outlawed, period.

Thanks for posting this.

[BradBlog]

9. No kidding...

As is very difficult to notice...that write-in candidate was for the previously listed race (Senate race). To be honest, when I first received the screenshots from the ballot, it took me three or four times scrolling through it before I could even find the Jennings/Buchanan race!

[ChiciB1]

8. Thanks For This Post.... I LIVE Here & I For One DO SUPPORT

IMPEACHMENT! Like for KATHY DENT! She's been nothing but CONTROVERSIAL since she came on scene. I have gone to meetings and have participated in this FARCE!

Ain't it funny how Cruella, kind of sorta taught Demented Dent the "trick of the trade!" We can only keep our fingers crossed here! I had thought they would have ENOUGH sense to keep their mitts off this, but NO.... it's funny ballots ALL OVER AGAIN!!

[usregimechange]

10. I don't get it, 18,000 people didn't vote for the race because it

was at the top of the screen?

[usregimechange]

11. Maybe they just chose to not vote for that particular race?

[BradBlog]

12. Doubt it...

Take a look at the complete article. And at this one:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3820

...Which notes that absentee voters (paper-based) who voted in the same election had an undervote rate of just about 2%. As well, the races both above and below the Jennings/Buchanan race had undervote rates of anywhere from 1 to 2% including a race for Hospital board!

The undervote rate in Jennings/Buchanan was more than 13%! Seems a bit difficult to presume that ONLY voters who voted touch-screen and ONLY in Sarasota chose to NOT vote in the race on purpose, doncha think?

[MonkeyFunk]

13. That's not too likely

because the undervote in OTHER counties voting on the same exact race was much lower than in this race.

There was a problem with the ballot design - but I don't see how a lawsuit could force a revote. The race WAS on there, the options were on there, they were just put in a poor position on the page, without a proper heading to call it out.

What's surprising is that people don't TEST these ballot layouts before the election.

[drm604]

14. I'm no lawyer

but it seems to me that the ridiculously anomalous under-vote could by itself be grounds for a re-vote regardless of what caused it - poor ballot design, malfunctioning hardware, software bugs, deliberate hacking, or Martians. The numbers clearly show that something interfered with the determination of the will of the people. That should be enough!

[Richard Steele]

17. Very unlikely. Voters in the other 4 counties did not show such statistics.

Nor did early/absentee voters.

And given that the voters began reporting machine "errors"
with this particular race as soon as the polls opened, it
doesn't take a genius to see where the problem comes from.

[eomer]

15. Per Brad's update: there is more to it than just bad ballot position.

More to it, as in machine malfunction.

UPDATE 5:42pm PT: Pam Haengel, President of the non-partisan Voting Integrity Alliance of Tampa Bay contacts us to mention they believe it was not only the easy-to-miss position of the Jennings/Buchanan race on the ballot which led to the massive undervote percentage.

She tells us the folks on the ground there believe something else was definitely amiss, as an obscure down-ticket Hospital Board race (see page 6 of the PDF screenshot collection) had a similar layout to the Jennings/Buchanan race, yet received at least 3000 more votes. Haengel points out many voters who have reported they tried twice to register a vote in Jennings/Buchanan after their original selection failed to show up on their summary screen at the end of the voting process, suggesting a technical malfunction in the paperless ES&S touch-screen machines.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3821

[xxqqqzme]

16. the COMPLETE Orange County vote count was

finished Saturday & guess what????? A Democrat won the seat! The margins see-sawed over the last 2 weeks - on 11/8 the rethug had 'won' by 1600 votes. All the votes were counted under the ever present volunteer Democratic observers. See what happens when all the votes are counted.