House Dismisses Challenge to Outcome of Florida Race

[Freddie Stubbs]

By Molly Hooper, CQ Staff

The House on Monday dismissed a challenge filed by candidate Christine Jennings and affirmed that Republican Vern Buchanan was the rightful winner in the 2006 election.

By voice vote, the House adopted a resolution (H Res 989) closing the books on a bitterly contested race that led Florida to ban the use of touch-screen voting machines.

Buchanan had been certified the winner, by 369 votes, of the Sarasota-based 13th Congressional District seat.

More than 18,000 ballots were recorded as having no choice made in that race. Jennings said she was certain that machine glitches were responsible for at least some of those thousands of no-vote ballots.

more: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002676168

[TooBigaTent]

1. Dems in power sacrifice one of their own to save their own hides. 2000 reprise.

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. How does this save the hides of any Democrats?

:shrug:

[Stevepol]

3. Let me get this straight.

They checked the machines and the machines worked all right.

Therefore, there's no problem.

Duh??

In other words, there's no explanation for the fact that the percentage of undervotes in this district was 16% compared to about 1-3% in the rest of the state, and only in that one race?

So if we check the machines and they work all right, there's no problem.

Hey, what if the machines were programmed for that day and time to create undervotes in that particular locale and only in that locale and then there were a couple lines of programming included to delete the lines of programming after they'd done their nefarious work? Or what if the central tabulator shuffled the votes around on the screen.

I guess that's not our problem.

Dear GAO, NOTE: The problem is with the vote theft. You still haven't explained the 18,000 undervotes. And this is supposed to be an answer??? The machines work OK??

If the machines work fine, then there are two explanations: (1) the machines were programmed to cheat or (2) the voters were at fault in that particular district and either were dumb as dirt or consciously decided to refrain from voting in the central race of the election.

Which is the most logical conclusion?

The GAO conclusion: The machines worked OK.

Yeah, right. Let's check the GAO for symptoms of Alzheimer's. That could be a third explanation.