Florida Recount, 2006-Style

(CBS)  This story was written by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and producers Phil Hirschkorn and Michael Rey.

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On Monday Florida will begin its first recount for a federal election since the botched 2000 presidential contest, but this time there will be no hanging chads. It is the reliability of touch screen electronic voting machines that will be in the spotlight.

The disputed race in Florida's 13th Congressional District, south of Tampa, is one place where the kind of machines used by 40% of American voters this week may have malfunctioned significantly enough to alter the outcome of a seat in Congress.

The CBS News Investigative Unit has obtained an E-mail by a key election official indicating she may have known well before Election Day the machines weren't working properly.

Republican Vern Buchanan beat Democrat Christine Jennings by 373 votes with 237,842 counted, according to unofficial results from the Florida Division of Elections.

That tiny margin – less than one-half of one percent – triggered an automatic recount under Florida state law.

But the Jennings campaign believes thousands of votes in the district's most populous county went unrecorded. If they had been counted, the campaign says, Jennings would be on her way to Washington.

The red flag rose in Sarasota County, the heart of the district, where, if the results are to be believed, nearly one in every six (16%) Election Day voters either skipped or missed the hotly contested House race and were not counted in the final tally.

(Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

The Jennings/Buchanan race was hard to miss on the touch screen iVotronic machines supplied by ES&S. It was the second contest listed on the ballot, right between high profile races for Senator and Governor.

During two weeks of early voting prior to Nov. 7, election officials noticed that an unusually high number of voters using the machines – one in five – seemed to miss the House race.

"Please remind every voter to make sure they do not overlook the 13th congressional race at the top of the second page of voting," wrote Kathy Dent, Sarasota's Supervisor of Elections, to poll workers on Friday, Nov. 3.

"Some voters are overlooking the Buchanan/Jennings race until they get to the review screen," Dent continued in the E-mail obtained by CBS News. "This is critical."

One poll worker who requested anonymity told us how she received the message and reminded people about the House race on Election Day. Her theory: "I am thinking people touched the square and didn't notice the X didn't come out."

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Read Kathy Dent's pre-election e-mail.

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The results in her precinct showed a huge "undervote" in the House race. "We thought, 'Oh man, we're in trouble," the poll worker says.

As our team investigated voting machine glitches around the country, including Sarasota County on Election Day, Supervisor Dent wrote us: "Voters are simply overlooking the race. There is not a calibration problem."

Dent has since not returned phone calls or replied to questions we posed by E-mail. (In a press conference Wednesday, Dent stood by her view it was the intent of nearly 1 in 6 voters to skip the House race).

Jennings is now crying foul. The Democrat won 53% of the vote in Sarasota County, and her campaign says, had even half the 17,811 "missing" machine votes been recorded, the she would have overcome her margin of defeat.

Compare the Election Day numbers to Sarasota's paper absentee ballots: only two-and-half percent of absentee ballots ignored the House race.

Would six times as many people from the same place do so on Election Day?

They didn't anywhere else in the district, and less than two percent of Sarasota's voters skipped the senatorial and gubernatorial contests.

"I'm suspicious. Something's funny. I wish knew what," says Doug Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and expert on voting machine technology.

"Let's assume they were reminding people. That makes it even harder to believe voters weren't expressing an opinion in the race," Jones says.

Voters in one other county in the district, Charlotte County, also used iVotronic touch screen machines made by ES&S, the nation's second largest voting equipment supplier. But of 29,000 voters there, just 226, or under one percent, skipped various House races.

In three other counties in the district – Manatee, Hardee and DeSoto – voters cast paper ballots counted by optical scanners, made by Diebold, the nation's top supplier of election equipment.

In Manatee County, the district's second most populous, where more than 94,000 people voted, there were only 2,300 blanks for the House race, around two percent.

"The vote was fair and accurate," says Buchanan communications director Sally Tibbets. "It does appear that many people chose for whatever reason not to vote in this race. That doesn't mean there is problem with these voting machines."

Dozens of Satasota County voters called "election protection" hotlines. Some did catch their "undervote" when they had the chance.

"I punched in all my candidates including the congressional candidates, and when it came to the review page, I looked up and I noticed that my vote for Christine Jennings hadn't registered," postal worker Joe Betits said.

He tried again, and the vote showed up on the summary page – which is what ES&S says anyone should expect with its machines.

"According to the Supervisor of Elections, undervotes were a result of an intentional choice not to make a selection in the congressional race or unintentional omission of a selection," says ES&S spokesman Ken Fields. "The touch screen system used in Sarasota County provides unlimited opportunity for a voter to make and change selections before a ballot is cast."

ES&S has yet to examine the machines at issue but is sending technicians to assist the recount.

But what will happen in Sarasota and Charlotte counties, is less of a recount than a re-tally of the same results, because Florida is among the 15 states that do not allow touch screen machines to produce a paper trail – a plastic-covered scroll visible to voters summarizing their choices before they hit the "vote" button. (The paper is stored inside the machine; voters don't get an ATM-style receipt).

Virginia, where 78% of voters used touch-screen machines, according to Election Data Services, also does not require a paper trial – a possible factor in Republican Sen. George Allen's decision not to seek a recount in his failed race against Democrat Jim Webb.

"It won't uncover what happened," Jones says of the pending Florida recount. "It really does matter to all of us around the country who use touch screen machines why such a preposterously large percentage of the population didn't have their votes counted."

In a bit of irony, a majority of Sarasota county voters Tuesday passed a referendum requiring the county to use a paper-based ballot system in the future.

What's more, the House seat is being vacated by Katherine Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State who notoriously presided over the 2000 election recount. Harris was trounced in her run for Senate this week.
By Armen Keteyian, Phil Hirschkorn and Michael Rey

[edoc7]

Please stop repeating that lie. Democrat-controlled news organizations reviewed the Florida election and agreed that the results were accurate.

Most of the locations where problems occurred were controlled by Democrats, not Republicans. The Florida Supreme Court, 100% Democrats, agreed with the results. Democrats, not Republicans, tried to prevent our brave soldiers from having their votes counted.

Please do not slander Florida nor our President further. The Democrat Party barely eeked-out a majority in 2006, mostly by pretending to be Republicans (look at the exit poll results) and slandering their opponents (talk about the politics of personal destruction). We are doomed to an ugly next two years because hyper-partisan leftist radicals now control our Congress.

The only question is when the voters will discover that they have been swindled and will they remain angry long enough to right their error in 2008. Perhaps the liberal media can cover up that long, I sure hope not.

We have never had error-free elections. In 1960 the understanding was that Kennedy stole more votes in the cities than Nixon could steal in the suburbs and rural areas. The voting ptocess is cleaner now than any time in American history -- and getting better as it gets more open. Tens of thousands of dead people and fake people were registered by Democrat-contractors -- where is your outrage toward the Democrat Party about that? Outrage that is partisan-only is hypocrisy.

[kcstan11]

It looks like it's time to send out 17,811 paper ballots for that race only or, they can send out 237,842 ballots for that race only. A revote is the only fair way to handle this mess.

I have been a computer technician for 45 years and, I have always had resevations about touch-screen technology, especially in something as critical as voting.

A paper-trail would provide some additional security ... but not enough. The designer of this system chose a default that "the voter did not intend to vote in this race". In most cases this would be a valid choice of a default ... but in this case it does not compensate for a obvious glitch in the touch-screen technology.

Need some help with this mess in the Florida State Supreme court ... call me.

[markfoley01]

I THINK I HAVE FOUND A WAEY FOR ELECTIONS TO WORK WITHOUT A HITCH.

THE EASIEST THING TO DO (FROM MY PERSOECTIVE)( WOULD BE TO JUST PASS AROUND A HAt. OK.

THE HAT IS BEING PASSED AROUND AND EACH PERSON WHO WANTS TO VOTE JUST WRITES DOWN THEIR CANDIDATE AND, ONCE THE HAT REACHES THE FRONT OF THE ROOM,

THE VOTES ARE COUNted.

THIS WAYm tehere is NO REASON TO have COMPLICEATED MACHEINES INVOLVED IN THIS PROCESs. LETS GO BACK TO SIMPLER TIMES.

THIS IS WHY POLITICS ARE WRNNG TODAY. THERE IS SO MUCH LIES AND THEIVES.

I SAY WE GO BACKTO THE ""PASS THE HAT AROUND AND WRITE NAME ON PAPER AND PUT IT INTO TEH HAT" METHOD

THE NEXT PRESIDENT SHOULD BE JEB BUSH. HE HE HE

[klezmerband]

My friend's Mom said that she and other voters noticed that their votes were not counted by the machine. They will be making a written statement to this effect. I heard about this before the news picked it up, the day of the election.

[webdepot]

There are other stupid things about e-machines that are very troublesome in something as important as an election.
I worked several years in main frame computer repair, and failure of an electronic component within the computer can definitely caused count problems.. so... e-machines are not infallible no matter how well intentioned the integrity.
Outlawing proprietary code for these machines is a no brainer.. not that the code should be released to the public... but a non-partisan review of the code by knowledgeable software engineers should be a requirement before it's use.. and then some method would have to be established to verify the program in any particular machine is, in fact, the program that was verified by this panel.
During my tenure with the main frames, there was a scandal in NYC within a major bank that handled stock transactions.. The person that wrote the software for their mainframe, would divert any mills (tenths of cents) from any stock transaction into his personal account.. The bank had set up a 2 million dollar fund to cover the up and down shortfall that would be expected from "rounding off" with the eventual evening out of the pluses and minuses... except, the fund was always running out.. which is what led to this guy's downfall.

[webdepot]

laurieleemoo -
Yes... that has been discussed in this thread.. here are the facts:
a single election district comprised of all or part of several different counties.. the counties are the ones that picked what type of machine would be used for elections..
Now... the results in this district:
absentee ballots showed a 2% undervote.
other counties within this district that were using paper ballots that were optically scanned, show a 2% undervote..
The e-machines in this county show a 16% undervote.. the trend has already been identified in this district, appproximately 2% of the voters had no opinion in the Congressional race... so why are the results of this one county within this district so far out of wack..
The results are highly suspicious... unfortunately, without any verifiable paper trail, nothing can be done... the results of this election in this district are not verifiable..

[random_radar]

laurieleemoo,

Sometimes it appears that people JUST DON'T READ the article before posting on the blog.

The article goes into great detail showing that the absentee ballots and ballots in other areas show a much lower percentage of non-votes in the race. The whole point of the article is to show that something appears to be wrong.

If you want to make a comment, make sure that you read and understand the article. Otherwise you are just advertising how dumb you are.

[laurieleemoo]

it does not even seem like its even crossing the democrats minds that maybe the people there just DID NOT WANT to vote in that race. Maybe they could not decided on which was the lesser of the two evils.
Thats how it was here probably for a lot of people when it came to the Senate race between Nelson & Katherine Harris. Some repbublicans probably just did not vote in that race. There are republicans out there that did not want a democrat in office and at the same time did not want Katherine Harris in office either.

Somtimes, in a race, you just DON"T VOTE for that reason. Have they even thought about that?

[jn122736]

Part 1

Electronic voting, for the most part will never be safe and honest. Even with a paper trail the machine must transmit the vote electronically to be counted.

If the paper copy is given to the voter to inspect and keep, the machine can be programmed to transmit an entirely different result than the one shown on the paper it feeds back out to the voter.

And two paper backups, one for the voter and one to kept for recounts, would make no difference if the one intended for recount purposes was retained inside the machine until later retrieval by workers, because the retained copy would simply read the same as the false vote transmitted for electronic count

The safest way, though not safe enough for my comfort, to continue electronic voting with a paper trail would be:%u2026 Have only one paper copy printed; eject it out of the machine directly to the voter for personal inspection and then the voter to present the copy to the precinct workers collection box for recount purposes.

[jn122736]

Part 2.
I am far from qualified to speak about today%u2019s advanced technology but It seems to me that, compared to sending two successful robots to mars that are still operating years longer than originally planned, controlling both electronically from earth by sending commands, changing software to suit changing needs, etc., manipulating vote tallies is a cake walk.

In any event all voting machine software must be available for monitoring by selected observers AS VOTES ARE BEING CAST to help guard against inaccuracies, accidental or other wise.