Given that control of Congress does not hang in the balance, and certain assumptions that elections in Florida are supposed to be embarrassing failures, not nearly enough attention is being given to the recently-decided House race in Florida’s 13th congressional district. Whether you believe some of the general discussion about Republicans trying to “steal” elections is overwrought or not, this instance is not only indefensible, it’s ridiculous.
In this competitive race to replace (who else?) Rep. Katherine Harris (R), Republican Vern Buchanan was named the “winner” last week against Democrat Christine Jennings, with a hyper-thin lead of 369 votes. The problem, however, is that there are 18,000 missing votes from Jennings’ strongest area, Sarasota County. A study by the local paper found that one in three of Sarasota election officials “had general complaints from voters about having trouble getting votes to record” on the electronic machines. Given Jennings’ strength in the county, it’s obvious that she would have won a majority of the missing votes, more than enough to win the election.
As Paul [tag]Krugman[/tag] noted today, this is a clear instance in which paperless voting machines “delivered the race to the wrong candidate.” Krugman pointed to two key angles to this story — the local outrage about the 13th and the broader national problem.
About a third of those interviewed by the paper reported that they couldn’t even find the Congressional race on the screen. This could conceivably have been the result of bad ballot design, but many of them insisted that they looked hard for the race. Moreover, more than 60 percent of those interviewed by The Herald-Tribune reported that they did cast a vote in the Congressional race — but that this vote didn’t show up on the ballot summary page they were shown at the end of the voting process. […]
Although state officials have certified Mr. Buchanan as the victor, they’ve promised an audit of the voting machines. But don’t get your hopes up: as in 2000, state election officials aren’t even trying to look impartial. To oversee the audit, the state has chosen as its “independent” expert Prof. Alec Yasinsac of Florida State University — a Republican partisan who made an appearance on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a “Bush Won” sign.
Ms. Jennings has now filed suit with the same court, demanding a new election. She deserves one.
Indeed, she does. A recount of votes that excludes the missing votes is irrelevant. It’s time to do it again.
And then, of course, there’s the national problem.
I’ve been shocked at how little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we have as clear a demonstration as we’re ever likely to see that warnings from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic voting are valid — and most Americans probably haven’t even heard about it.
As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn’t become a major national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we’re in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?
I hope not, but given the reaction thus far, I’m not optimistic.
Similarly, E. J. Dionne Jr. has a message for policy makers.
[I]f anyone still needs evidence that all electronic systems should provide verifiable paper trails so real ballots are available in the event of a recount, let them go to Sarasota.
If the courts punt, Congress, which has a right to judge the credentials of its members, should get to the bottom of this. It may be asking the impossible, but Democrats and Republicans should not make this a fight about which party picks up one more seat. Instead, they should conduct a joint inquest into this contest to provide a basis for bipartisan legislation creating national standards for improving our voting systems.
The U.S. Supreme Court has insisted that “[h]aving once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” Thousands of voters in the 13th District have an interest in demanding that the system live up to those words, which came from the decision in a little case in 2000 called Bush v. Gore.
Stay tuned.