FL-13: SecState says it wasn't the voting machines

Another chapter in the ongoing saga of Florida voting goes the Republic Party's way:

Neither voting equipment nor election software caused more than 18,000 votes to disappear in a disputed congressional race to replace former U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, according to two audits released Friday by the Florida Secretary of State.

But what went wrong Nov. 7 in the Sarasota County District 13 election is still a mystery, the audits found.

[...]

"The team's unanimous opinion is that the iVotronic firmware, including faults that we identified, did not cause or contribute to the CD13 undervote," reads a report authored by a team of eight computer scientists based at Florida State University who conducted the audit.

But the report goes on: "There is no dispute that this undervote is abnormal and unexpected and that it cannot be explained solely by intentional undervoting."

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning issued a statement Friday saying the audit confirmed that "there is no evidence that suggests the official results are in error."

It should be noted that the lead computer scientist on FSU's audit was associate professor Dr. Alec Yasinsac, whose political activities include contributions to the campaigns of Katherine Harris and GOP congressional candidate Frank Schwerin. Just sayin'.

Anyway, we still don't know why there were 18,000 undervotes in Sarasota County, and I wonder if we ever will:

[Democratic candidate Christine] Jennings and voter advocacy groups, including People for the American Way, mounted a legal battle to gain access to ES&S' source code for the machines.

That lawsuit is awaiting a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal after a circuit judge ruled Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture" and did not warrant disclosing the trade secrets of the voting machine company.

Some experts testified that poor ballot design contributed to the anomaly and that the race was difficult to locate on the touch screens.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., launched an inquiry into the election, asking Congress' Government Accountability Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to perform a "top-to-bottom" investigation into the 18,000 undervotes.

Stay tuned ...