District 13 race to go back to court

Jennings' lawyers want access to the touch- screen computer code.

Published: Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 3:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 7:06 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE -- As the dispute over the outcome of the 13th Congressional District election heads back to court next week, supporters of Democrat Christine Jennings are citing a report by a voting expert on the other side of the case who says Jennings might have won the election if Sarasota County had used a different ballot design.

In its defense of its touch-screen machines -- which Jennings has alleged were faulty and resulted in a huge undervote in the congressional race -- Election Systems & Software Inc. has hired Michael Herron, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College.

In a Dec. 3 report, which he wrote in collaboration with political scientists from UCLA and the University of Rochester, Herron said that there was "a 100 percent chance" that Jennings would have won the race if Sarasota voters had been voting in Charlotte County, where there was a much smaller undervote in the congressional race between Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan.

Buchanan has been declared the winner in the race by a 369-vote margin.

Jennings' supporters assert that Herron's findings, as well as testimony from Jennings' academic experts, MIT political scientist Charles Stewart and Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach, make a compelling case that something went wrong in the ES&S touch-screen machines, resulting in 18,000 voters in Sarasota failing to cast a vote in the hotly contested congressional race.

In a hearing, scheduled to begin Tuesday in a circuit courtroom in Tallahassee, Jennings' lawyers will assert that those academic opinions bolster their argument that they should have access to the computer codes of the ES&S iVotronic machines to determine whether a software or hardware flaw led to the undervote.

But ES&S has resisted any disclosure of its codes, arguing that two state reviews of the machines have found no physical problems with the voting system.

ES&S' lawyers also note that Herron, in contrast to Jennings' academic experts, assert that it was a ballot design flaw that led to the large undervote, as opposed to some software or hardware problem with the electronic voting machines.

Herron's report argues that the problem was the grouping of the Buchanan-Jennings race on the same electronic page as the governor's race, which had a large field of candidates.

A Herald-Tribune investigation previously suggested that flawed ballot design was likely the main reason for the highly unusual undervote.

Herron concluded that if Sarasota County had used a similar ballot design as Charlotte, where the congressional race was on its own page, there would have been a much lower undervote, probably resulting in a Jennings victory.

Herron's report mentioned problems in other counties that used iVotronic machines. A Herald-Tribune analysis has shown that massive undervotes occurred in those counties where the multiple-candidate governor's race was grouped with other races, such as the attorney general's contest.

"The problematic grouping method that Sarasota employed -- having a two-candidate U.S. House race on the same touch-screen as the Florida gubernatorial race -- was employed by other counties, albeit with different races, and in these other counties and associated races we generally find high undervote rates," he wrote.

As to why the grouping of two races on one electronic page may have led to an undervote, Herron said it remained to be determined. It could be a problem where a two-candidate race was grouped with a race with multiple candidates, or he suggested it could simply be a problem when multiple candidate names were listed on one page.

But because of those apparent problems, Herron's report does conclude: "iVotronic touch screen voting systems should not combine important races on the same voting page."

As Jennings' lawyers point out, Herron's report also does not rule out a machine malfunction as the cause of the problem.

However, Herron made it clear that he believes that is doubtful.

He noted that if a "glitch" had occurred, it would have been present in all of the Sarasota voting machines but only impacted one race -- the congressional contest. It would have also been present in voting machines in Charlotte and Lee counties, but there it would have impacted different races.

"Yes, this is possible," he wrote. "However, it seems to be a significant stretch of the imagination."

This story appeared in print on page BS1


Comments are currently unavailable on this article

▲ Return to Top