The 13th Congressional District in Florida is still making news. Who knew my district would become the center point for Democrat accusations of voter fraud? Democrat Christine Jennings still hasn’t conceded the election despite the fact the election has been certified and she has lost every single recount. It’s ironic that Democrats who trust government to solve every problem cannot trust election results. This past election I got to use a electronic voting system for the first time. At the time I thought to myself then that only an idiot could complain about the easy to use machines. Oh well, thanks to these “concerned citizens” Sarasota County is returning to paper ballets. It will not change election results; just make it more difficult to vote. It’s just another example of a good intention that will have negative results.
In late November, Florida election officials began yet another test, this time running a mock election on a few voting machines to see if that would produce results similar to the actual election. It did, with no serious malfunctions, pervasive or otherwise. Jennings reacted by adding Election Systems & Software, Inc., to her lawsuit. Finally, she vowed to ask the House of Representatives, when Democrats take control, to throw out the results of the election. In early December, she got the support of Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who called for a re-vote.The only problem was, there was no evidence anything had gone wrong with the machines. As the wrangling went on, a group of three political scientists — James Honaker and Jeffrey Lewis of UCLA and Michael Herron of Dartmouth — began to look into the matter. They found no evidence of machine malfunction, either, and instead argued that the problem was most likely a confusing ballot design in Sarasota County’s machines. The ballot for the 13th District was on the same screen as that for the Florida governor’s race. The governor’s ballot was bigger, had more candidates, and took up most of the screen, the researchers found, and that most likely distracted voters’ eyes from the Buchanan-Jennings race.
“One out of six, or an unusually high 16 percent, of Sarasota electronic ballots recorded no House vote, compared to a 5 percent or less House “undervote” in the district’s four other counties or by 2 percent of Sarasota voters using paper absentee ballots.”
How convenient to be able to claim “bad ballot design” for an outrageous undervote and not be held responsible. ES&S machines are notorious for not being able to handle more than 1 race to a screen and to add graphics to the page to boot. I hope whoever designed the ballot made a lot of money because they should be sitting in Raiford.
I don’t think it was the ballot, there was nothing confusing about the ballot. This district it heavily Republican. The Republican that won (Vern Buchanan)isn’t exactly that popular with corporate community here. He made his money as a car dealer. During the last election there were 12,000 undervotes, so Jennings is complaining about an increase in 6000 undervotes.
I’ve stated my theory a few months ago. Republican disenchantment with Buchanan and the Congress itself led to many people skipping that vote. I about skipped it myself, but it was the lesser of two evils at that point.
I think that it is intellectually dishonest to assume that elections are truly under the control of the government. The use of voting machines with code written by private parties sort of throws the validity of ANY election result into question unless there is a hand count. (yes, I know that handcounts are tedious and subject to fraud as well). This is especially true if the voting machine makers seem unable or unwilling to provide a written voter paper trail.
Democrats may worry a little bit more than Republicans because the Diebolds of the U.S. are often heavily tilted in their support of the GOP.
At any rate, who cares who wins in Florida? Nemov voted! Huzzah!
Anything you ever want to know about political contributions can be found here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D000000065&Name=Assn+of+Trial+Lawyers+of+America
Of course Trial Lawyers give to the Democratic party. Democrats believe that everyone should have equal access to the courts while Republicans want to limit access to justice with tort reform. You aren’t against justice are you?
haha, so all that money guarantees right that are in the constitution. Democrats also care about universal health coverage. Any guess why health care costs are out of control? Yep, all the litigation by Ambulance Chasers like John Edwards. The idea that tort reform is going to limit justice is absurd, but so are most liberal ideas.
What a bunch of crap. Malpractice lawsuit payouts and actual filings have been declining for some time. Net payouts as a percentage of premiums has declined from 69% to 33%
The whole tort reform movement is an Absurd and ridiulous attempt to make major Democratic contributers look bad and to allow Insurance companies to look you in the eye and tell you that “…its the lawyers that are causing us to raise your rates 18.4%.” Infact,there has NEVER even been an insurance company funded study that indicated that insurance premiums have raised becuase of malpractice. Hell, they have all the data, it should be easy for them…
I understand that many people are not educated in the way that access to the courts works. Here is a brief rundown.
The wealthy pay an hourly rate because they can afford it, they usueally are able to negotiate nice settlements for botched boobjobs and scalpel leave behinds.
The middle class and the poor have to rely on attorneys that pay the costs up front and then take 1/3 in fees after expenses because they took a high level of risk. (Risk? High payout? Why that’s AMERICAN!). By limiting jury award and capping damages, it becomes econimcally impractical for attorneys to pay for experts and testing and things that large insurance companies do to protect their doctor that killed the child of plaintiff by prescribing hydracodone to someone allergic, or maybe the plaintiff who can’t walk anymore because the doctor snipped the wrong nerve.
And Justice for all (unless you are not able to pay for it upfront?).
But hey, it sure sounds good to blame attorneys and it works even better for the namecallers on the right to demonize John Edwards by whining about lawyers.
Its all just economics right?
[...] Rise of the Machines: For years Democrats have complained about voter machines. My district removed touchscreen voting machines after a scare campaign by [...]