Jennings Contests Election Results

Sarasota, FL – Citing statistical and eyewitness evidence of significant machine malfunctions sufficient to call into doubt the result of the election for Florida Congressional District 13, the Christine Jennings campaign today officially contested the election in Circuit Court. The complaint specifically requests the judge to order a new election “to ensure that the will of the people of the Thirteenth District is respected, and to restore the confidence of the electorate, which has been badly fractured by this machine-induced debacle.”

More than 17,000 undervotes (15%) were recorded on Sarasota County’s electronic voting machines, a rate nearly 6 times higher than the undervote rate in the other District 13 counties or in Sarasota’s paper absentee ballots. Jennings won Sarasota County by a 53% - 47% margin, while losing the district-wide manual recount by 369 votes. As noted in the complaint:
“The failure to include these votes constitutes a rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to place in doubt, and likely change, the outcome of the election.”

The complaint also cites significant eyewitness accounts describing a consistent pattern of voter difficulty in having their votes recorded in the House of Representatives race, but not in other races on the ballot.

“This is clearly a case of machine error – not ballot design error and not voter error,” added Jennings campaign attorney Kendall Coffey. “We’re asking the courts to ensure that the will of the people of the 13th District is respected and end the crisis of confidence among the electorate by ordering a new election.”
As part of the discovery process, the Jennings campaign seeks expedited discovery of items including audit and ballot-image logs generated by the iVotronic system, iVotronic machines and related hardware that generated particularly high undervote rates, and the software – particularly the source code – used to operate that hardware.

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