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HeraldTribune.com Southwest Florida's Information Leader
March 14, 2007
Voting
machine maker warned of 'issue'
By JEREMY WALLACE
H-T POLITICAL WRITER
jeremy.wallace@heraldtribune.com
A voting machine manufacturer warned state elections
officials and Sarasota County's Supervisor of Election of an "issue"
with its equipment months before the disputed Nov. 7 election but no changes
were made, a new memo shows.
Even though Election Systems & Software recommended in
the Aug. 15 memo that all of its Florida customers -- including Sarasota County
-- train poll workers and voters to expect slow responses on the touch-screen
voting machines when their selections were made, Sarasota Supervisor of
Elections Kathy Dent said the state determined it was too close to the election
to make any changes.
Dent also said the instructions on how to use the iVotronic
machines at polling sites seemed to cover what ES&S recommended.
In addition, ES&S' promised fixes for the problem never
were made available before the Nov. 7 election, state officials said.
Democrat Christine Jennings' attorney, Sam Hirsch, said the
new memo is significant to Jennings' case for a new election for two key
reasons. First, it shows that ES&S acknowledged problems with the equipment
despite assurances that there were no problems, Hirsch said.
Secondly, Hirsch said it shows the state, ES&S and Dent
have withheld information his team requested months ago. Jennings' legal team
requested copies of all correspondence between Dent and ES&S, but the memo
only became public after surfacing on an Internet site weeks ago, Hirsch said.
"How could we not have gotten this?" Hirsch asked.
What's troublesome, Hirsch said, is that ES&S said it
would need to install a software patch to fix the problem, yet there never was
any patch submitted to the state before the now controversial Nov. 7 election.
Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner of the
Nov. 7 election by 369 votes. But Jennings is challenging the results, saying
an abnormally high undervote cost her the election.
About 18,000 Sarasota County voters who went to the polls
did not cast a vote in the Congressional race. The 13 percent undervote was
substantially higher than in surrounding counties or in other top-of-the-ticket
races.
The case is before a state appeals court, which is supposed
to rule soon on whether Jennings should have access to ES&S' software
codes.
Jennings is also petitioning the U.S. House to overturn the
election results. The House is expected to investigate after the Florida courts
rule.
A state elections spokesman said a recent state audit of the
Sarasota County results determined there was no correlation between the delay
ES&S warned about and the undervote. Florida Division of Elections
spokesman Sterling Ivey confirmed that no patch was ever submitted to the state
for certification.
Hirsh said there is no correspondence showing what happened
to the problem or if it was fixed after the primary election on Sept. 5
primary.
In the Aug. 15 letter, ES&S regional account manager
Linda Bennett says "after a number of inquiries" ES&S verified
that voting machines were showing slow response times. They pinpointed the
problem to a "smoothing filter" that delayed selections after a voter
touched the screen.
"In some cases, the time lapse on these consistent
reads is beyond the normal time a voter would expect to have their selection
highlighted," Bennett writes in the letter. "The delayed response to
touch may vary from terminal to terminal and also may not occur every single
time a terminal is used."
_____
Jeremy Wallace can be reached at 361-4966 or
jeremy.wallace@heraldtribune.com.
Last modified: March 14. 2007 6:30PM