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Politics

Voting mystery defies solid answer

The recount in Sarasota's congressional race ends without satisfying the questions.

By ADAM C. SMITH
Published November 18, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] Members of the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections office sort through absentee ballots that showed an undervote in the 13th Congressional District race.

SARASOTA - Something strange happened in Sarasota County when one in eight voters - more than 18,000 people - skipped a high-profile, neck-and-neck congressional race.

But what was it?

- Ina Arnell says it took three tries before an uncooperative touch screen voting machine would accept her vote for Democratic candidate Christine Jennings of Sarasota. She wonders how many other voters went away wrongly assuming their choices had been recorded.

- John Browning saw that his voting machine's final review screen showed he missed the Congressional District 13 race, just as he intended. The Sarasota retiree said he was so turned off by the candidates and their nasty campaigns that for the first time ever he chose not to vote in a high-profile race.

- Then there was Susan Gaar, a poll worker who on Election Day heard voter after voter complain about not finding the congressional race tucked at the top of their second ballot page. She can't understand how such a badly designed ballot was approved in the first place.

These are the leading explanations - faulty, paperless machines, turned-off voters, and bad ballot design combined with careless voters - to explain how the voting pattern in Sarasota could be so different from surrounding counties voting in the same race.

Jennings won Sarasota County, which recorded overwhelmingly higher numbers of undervotes than counties that used different voting machines, or even from Sarasota voters who cast absentee ballots.

But as a two-day recount concluded Friday and lawsuits appeared certain, it is unclear whether there ever will be a clear explanation for what happened.

* * * 

A required manual recount showed Republican Vern Buchanan leading Democrat Jennings by 369 votes Friday.

On Monday, the state Division of Elections will certify Buchanan as the winner, a formality that won't end the controversy or the questions. The Jennings campaign may contest the results, an uphill challenge that likely would be based on alleged problems with the voting system.

The state also is preparing to audit the voting machines, a process that may not begin until after Thanksgiving. Ultimately, the U.S. House may decide the outcome.

"The people of the 13th District have spoken, and it is now time for Christine Jennings to concede the race," U.S. Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, said Friday.

"In every counting of the votes in the 13th District, Vern Buchanan has been declared the winner," he said. "Everyone aside from Christine Jennings seems to understand that."

Republicans contend that Sarasota residents have a track record of skipping races in high numbers.

In 2004, more than 21,000 voters - 13 percent - did not vote in a state Senate race and 12,000 voters - 6 percent - skipped the congressional race between Katherine Harris and Democrat Jan Schneider. Nearly 14 percent of voters skipped a County Commission primary this year.

Skeptics dismiss the plausibility of so many voters ignoring this year's congressional race, where millions of dollars were spent on TV ads.

"Vern Buchanan's mantra is that voters chose not to vote," said Jennings spokesman David Kochman. "If he's right, he has nothing to lose going through the process to make sure nothing went wrong."

While Sarasota Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent insists the machines worked fine, there clearly were problems in the election. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune surveyed election workers and found one out of three received complaints that voters had difficulty getting their votes to register. One in five said voters complained they did not notice the congressional race.

The congressional race shared Page 2 of the ballot with the gubernatorial race, which was set off with a teal "STATE" headline that the congressional race lacked. Voters' eyes may have gone straight to the bolder governor's race section, missing the congressional race above.

"This is an absolutely ridiculous ballot design that never should have been used," said Ted Selker, co-director of the CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project. He is conducting a study of the ballot, and suspects it played a key role in people neglecting to vote.

Elections Supervisor Dent, in fact, responded to complaints about the ballot during early voting by sending a "critical" warning to election workers telling them to remind people not to miss the Congressional District 13 race.

Kendall Coffey, an attorney for Jennings, says the ballot issue is less of a problem than the machines. The campaign has been flooded with complaints from voters who had problems with the machines not registering their votes. He wants a forensic investigation into the paperless machines, including access to their source code, which is legally off-limits to the public.

"The key to knowing the truth about what went wrong is a key that is being withheld," Coffey said.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727893-8241 or asmith@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 17, 2006, 23:57:29]