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From Our Archives: The Fight for Sarasota Voters

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The Fight for Sarasota Voters

Fighting for voters in Sarasota

Click to watch our expert forum
Click to read about our Revote Rally
Click to watch testimony from actual Sarasota voters

MEMO
12/12/06 - Florida's Debacle Requires a Re-Vote in Sarasota Today, National Reform Tomorrow


PRESS RELEASES
6/20/07 - Sarasota Voters Have to Wait Even Longer For An Explanation of What Happened Last November

1/23/07 - Sarasota Voters File Pleadings Opposing Attempt By Supervisor of Elections to Compromise Election Evidence

1/4/07 - Statement on the Provisional Seating of Vern Buchanan

12/21/06 - Florida Elections Officials Attempt to Blame Voters for Mismanaged Election

12/20/06 - Neas Calls on Congress to Fight for 18,000 Disenfranchised Voters

12/5/06 - Drury Comments Reveal Preexisting Bias, Cast Even More Doubt on Integrity of Audit Process

12/1/06 - Audit an Exercise in Futility; Revote Only Remedy for Sarasota Voters, Mitchell Says

11/28/06 - Revote Rally in Sarasota

11/28/06 - Today’s Audit Unlikely to Yield Useful Information About Sarasota County Voting Machines

11/22/06 - More Questions Arise About Competence and Impartiality of Sarasota Voting Machine Auditors

11/21/06 - Sarasota Voters File Lawsuit for Revote in Congressional Race

11/16/06 - PFAWF Criticizes Decision to Put Partisan Paper Trail Opponent in Charge of Sarasota Voting Machine Audit

11/15/06 - PFAW Foundation Calls For Public Hearing on Sarasota Undervotes

11/11/06 - PFAW Foundation Urges Sarasota County Not to Certify Results of Disputed Race in Florida's 13th Congressional District

11/9/06 - PFAW Foundation Asks for Investigation into Massive Undercount in Florida Congressional Race

Once again, Florida is the site of one of the most disturbing voting problems in the nation – and People For the American Way Foundation is there, fighting for voters’ right to cast votes that count.

In the recent elections, voting machine flaws in Sarasota County led to a massive undervote of more than 18,000 ballots in the 13th Congressional District race – where the current vote totals separate the candidates by less than 400 votes.

PFAW Foundation has been on the case from day one. Immediately after the election, we launched an investigation into the undervote and called the nation’s attention to this debacle. Then, we held a public forum that provided disenfranchised voters an opportunity to tell their stories. Now, PFAW Foundation is pursuing legal and political avenues of bringing about a revote that will allow disenfranchised voters to cast votes that count. PFAW Foundation and allied organizations are representing Sarasota County voters in a lawsuit seeking a revote that has been filed in state court, and we and our allies are working to rally public opinion to support both a revote and an independent investigation that can get to the bottom of this mess.

Here’s a timeline with more information about PFAW Foundation’s work in Sarasota County:

Rest assured, PFAW Foundation will stay on the case and do all it can to protect voters’ rights in Sarasota County and across the country.


Stunning News on the Fiasco Surrounding the November Election in Florida's 13th Congressional District

March 15, 2007 
To:      Members of the Boards & Progressive Allies
Fr:       Ralph G. Neas, President, People For the American Way Foundation

Over the past two days, new information has emerged in the fiasco surrounding the November election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, in which 18,000 votes disappeared from iVotronic voting machines.  Nearly three months before the election, Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent was informed by the manufacturer that a glitch in the machines could interfere with recording the votes – and she took no action.

This is a stunning development in a case where it was already manifestly clear that thousands of voters in Sarasota County were disenfranchised by faulty voting machines – and where the number of votes that went unrecorded was more than enough to change the outcome of the race. 

Reports began to surface Tuesday that the iVotronic vendor, ES&S, sent Ms. Dent a letter dated August 15, 2006, indicating that a glitch in the firmware could interfere with the recording of the votes.  Ms. Dent has been quoted in the news media as saying she learned of the problem too late to remedy it in time for the elections.  This indicates not only a serious dereliction of duty at the time, but shows that Ms. Dent has not been forthcoming with the voters she serves. 

A lawsuit challenging the results of the race is ongoing, brought by bipartisan voters represented by People For the American Way Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Voter Action, and the ACLU of Florida.  Through discovery in that lawsuit and through public records requests, the voters have requested all documents related to the use of ES&S’s machines in Sarasota, and yet, this letter was not disclosed.  Indeed, in seeking to avoid an independent examination of the machines by all parties in the case, ES&S and Ms Dent, have represented to the Court that there were no firmware glitches, and that the paperless iVotronic machines performed perfectly.

Now we see that in fact, ES&S and Dent knew about these flaws months before the election.  Ms. Dent and ES&S claim they didn’t have time to certify the firmware patch to fix this problem before the election – the September primary election – but there have been two elections since in Sarasota County, including the November, 2006 general election.  Indeed, rather than use the flawed ES&S equipment, Pasco County, Florida chose not to use the affected machines in the November election.  Ms. Dent claims that she disclosed e-mails which referenced the letter in passing, but while alleging that she gave the Jennings campaign “all the information that [the county] had, she does not deny withholding this letter, not only from Jennings campaign, but from the court, the litigants, and perhaps most importantly, from the voters who entrusted her.  The auditors hired by the State of Florida to privately audit the firmware used in Sarasota make only passing reference to the glitch in their audit report, trying to pass it off as simply an “allegation that has been floated on Internet newsgroups.”  But now the chief auditor admits that the audit team knew this was not merely an internet rumor, since they had the ES&S letter when they conducted the audit, as well has having logs of the numerous poll workers who complained about delay in the vote being recorded.  Their dismissive rejection of this bug somehow contributing to the undervote is similarly unconvincing, and is undermined by their failure to be forthcoming about the true nature of the firmware defect.

These revelations raise several questions:

Whatever the answers to these questions, one thing is clear – Kathy Dent and the State of Florida, and their agent ES&S, who were entrusted by the voters in Sarasota County to safeguard their right to vote, have served their fellow citizens poorly.  They seem to have allowed those voters to vote on technology that they knew was flawed, and have apparently sought to cover this fact up.

This shocking disclosure only serves to highlight the need for the voters of Sarasota County to have a revote in this race, and for Congress to conduct its own independent investigation on what exactly happened in Sarasota, and who the voters of Sarasota actually preferred represent them in Congress.  It is now clear that even ES&S knew that voting conducted on these defective paperless machines could not be trusted and that it was “required” that the firmware be fixed.  Kathy Dent and the state could have acted diligently to repair this flaw.  They not only failed to do so, but failed to disclose the existence of this flaw to the voters she serves.  ES&S could have told the Court that this glitch, or “condition” as they call it, existed when it claimed there was no basis for an independent examination of its firmware, but it hid that fact instead.  It’s time for transparency in Sarasota elections, and time we learned the true intent of the voters in the 13th Congressional District.


Sarasota County Voters Offer Public Testimony about Voting Machine Problems

On Thursday, November 16, People For the American Way Foundation held a hearing to give Sarasota County voters an opportunity to provide public testimony about the voting machine problems they encountered.

Representatives of PFAW Foundation, the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, Voter Action, Common Cause and the ACLU of Florida sat on a panel that took testimony from voters. Here are just a few of the stories voters provided about the problems they encountered while trying to vote:

Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.

Geraldine Schlotterback had to press the machine three times before it showed a vote in the 13th District race, but then when she arrived at the summary page, the vote had disappeared.

 

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John McBride’s voting machine malfunctioned when he tried to vote in the congressional race. When he emerged from the voting booth, he learned his wife had encountered the same problem.

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Dovie Murray voted in the congressional race, but when she arrived at the review screen, her vote was gone.

  

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When Tom Mawn voted, everything seemed to work fine, until he reached the end of the process and was told his congressional vote had not been recorded.

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Linda Flores went to review her vote, but she found that it had “literally fallen off the page.”

  

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John Minder was particularly interested in the congressional race, and he made sure to vote. But after Minder finished voting in other races, his congressional vote was no longer there.

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Marvin Mills did his homework before voting. He voted early, but after making the one vote that he was most eager to cast—in the congressional race—he found no vote was recorded.

 

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Carol Fisch made sure to vote in the congressional race, but the summary page showed no vote had been cast. She revoted, but now she is concerned that that second vote was not counted.

PFAW Foundation Sponsors "Revote Rally" in Sarasota

On Sunday, December 3, more than 500 Floridians showed up at a rally sponsored by People For the American Way Foundation, the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections and others to demand a revote in the election to represent Florida's 13th Congressional District.

PFAW Foundation's Florida Legal Counsel Reggie Mitchell was one of the featured speakers at the event, and he spoke forcefully about the need for a revote that ensures that every Sarasota County citizen who showed up at the polls can feel confident that his or her vote counts.

"The election in Sarasota County didn't work," Mitchell said. "The audit didn't work. The only way to give Sarasota County voters the voice they deserve is a revote. Voters deserve to have confidence that they can cast a vote that counts, especially in Florida. We need a revote, and then we need real reform."

Other speakers at the rally included Lowell Finley of Voter Action and Howard Simon of the ACLU Foundation of Florida. Both of those organizations have partnered with PFAW Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the nonpartisan lawsuit we have filed in state court on behalf of voters seeking a revote.

Pictures of the December 3 rally:

Participants in the Sarasota revote rally   Participants in the Sarasota revote rally
Participants in the Sarasota revote rally   Participants in the Sarasota revote rally
Participants in the Sarasota revote rally   Participants in the Sarasota revote rally
Participants in the Sarasota revote rally   Participants in the Sarasota revote rally
 


Press Release: Neas Calls on Congress to Fight for 18,000 Disenfranchised Sarasota County Voters

December 20, 2006
WASHINGTON — People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas called on Congress today to ensure that 18,000 Sarasota County, Florida, voters are not disenfranchised.

Neas issued the following statement:

“Our top priority is to make sure 18,000 voters are not disenfranchised. People For the American Way Foundation is pursuing this goal in the courts, in the Congress, and with the American people. With so many thousands of unrecorded votes, it is our belief that the only fair solution to this problem is a revote.

“It is important for Congress to address both the legal questions at stake and the issues of fundamental fairness for these voters.

“While we have great hope that the Florida courts will side with voters in the lawsuit currently being considered, Congress has its own independent responsibility under the Constitution to investigate this matter and make sure that justice is served. Congress has a number of options it can pursue in order to protect these voters’ rights, and it is important to note that January 4 is just the beginning of this process. The election can be contested and the seat vacated regardless of who, if anyone, is initially seated.

"This is not a partisan issue. We would take this position regardless of which candidate was initially in the lead. Republicans and Democrats in Congress should work together in a bipartisan manner to schedule election reform hearings to address these problems as quickly as possible.

“The 18,000 Sarasota County citizens whose votes are missing have put a human face on the substantial flaws that remain in our election system. This is a teachable moment, which is why our affiliate, People For the American Way, is calling on Congress to pass comprehensive election reform legislation, including a mandate that voters can verify their votes in every race. And we’ve got to do it in time for the 2008 elections, so this sort of travesty never happens again.”

In this November’s congressional elections, there was a massive undervote of more than 18,000 reported in the Sarasota County portion of Florida’s 13th Congressional District. Voter reports indicate and statistical analyses suggest that problems were caused by voting machine malfunction as well as other voting system flaws. People For the American Way Foundation and its nonpartisan allies Voter Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Florida have filed suit on behalf of 11 Sarasota County voters seeking a revote.


Memo: FL-13 Debacle Requires Re-Vote Today, National Reform Tomorrow

With a new Congress set to convene in less than a month, it’s critical to solve the festering problem in Florida’s 13th congressional district by allowing the citizens of Sarasota County to make their voices heard in a re-vote. It’s the only fair solution to what was arguably the biggest foul-up among many in this year’s midterm elections—a congressional race where some 18,000 votes were not recorded.

The Sarasota snafu also sends up a bright signal flare that Congress and individual state legislatures cannot ignore. They must investigate all the election problems voters experienced this year and enact genuine election reform in time for the 2008 elections. With the high turnout and close contests of a presidential year looming, we’ve got a little over a year to get it right.

The evidence in Sarasota County strongly suggests that several factors led to the massive undervote in the congressional race, where no vote was recorded for about one of every six Sarasota voters. Numerous voters’ accounts provide compelling evidence that voting machine error—faulty machine programming and/or malfunctioning touch screens—was a major problem. Machine error is also suggested by voting patterns, as other potential problems alone do not explain the fact that undervotes were twice as common among strongly Democratic voters as they were among strongly Republican ones. Flawed ballot design (and the distribution of sample ballots indicating a different design) was also apparently a problem. Crucially, in what amounts to official misconduct, election supervisor Kathy Dent did not adequately address ballot design problems when she became aware of them during early voting.

In fact, dozens of voters testified at a hearing cosponsored by People For the American Way Foundation that when they tried to vote in the race between Christine Jennings and Vern Buchanan their votes were not recorded, or somehow disappeared when the summary screen appeared. Other Sarasota voters have provided similar eyewitness testimony to the courts and the news media.

Despite this clear evidence that thousands of voters were disenfranchised, the state certified the election for Buchanan by a razor-thin margin of less than 400 votes. A meaningless “audit” of just ten machines, has thus far shed no light on how the undervote occurred. That’s not surprising considering that the lead auditor prejudged the audit, claiming “they’re not going to find anything,” before an examination of the voting machine software even began, and another auditor has clear partisan leanings and wore a “Bush won” button during the 2000 Florida recount. Editorial opinion in Florida and across the country has been scathing.

Jennings is contesting the results in court. Separately, People For the American Way Foundation, Voter Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Florida filed an independent, nonpartisan suit on behalf of voters asking for a revote. Additionally, Congress is preparing for a potential contest by Jennings to Buchanan’s certification as the official Representative of CD-13, which could result in numerous outcomes, one of them being a delay in seating a representative from Florida’s 13th District. This may be the last option available to protect the voting rights of the 18,000 Floridians that have thus far been denied.

It’s only by chance that the mess in Sarasota was not repeated in other races around the country. Problems with iVotronic voting machines, the type used in Sarasota, were widespread:

Those are only a few of the problems encountered with just one brand of voting machine. As a co-founder of the Election Protection coalition, People For the American Way Foundation is reviewing thousands of complaints from voters nationwide about voting problems—everything from machine failures to deceptive flyers, poorly trained poll workers, and the inequitable distribution of voting machines and election resources.

The mess in Sarasota County is a timely reminder that the nation needs comprehensive election reform. It’s no small irony that the race in Florida’s 13th district is to replace Katherine Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State who stood at the epicenter of the voting debacle in the Bush-Gore race in 2000. That sorry episode laid bare the flaws in our voting system that now, six years later, have been inadequately addressed.

The new Congress should start with hearings into what happened in Sarasota County, and in other places around the nation where the voting process failed, where voters were misled or intimidated, or where serious questions have been raised about the integrity of the voting process. Several excellent pieces of legislation, including Senator Hillary Clinton’s Count Every Vote Act and Senator Barack Obama’s Deceptive Practices and Intimidation Act, have already been introduced, and People For the American Way is working closely with congressional leaders on additional election reform legislation. People For the American Way is also working with lawmakers in more than a dozen state legislatures to push for election reform, including the removal of barriers to the ballot box.

In 2008, the nation will face a Presidential election with no incumbent, close House and Senate races, and election battles for key offices in state and local governments. The stakes, always high, will be intensified in a nation still sharply divided along political lines. We’ve got a little over a year to forge an election system that will make sure voters in Florida and all 50 states have full faith and confidence that their votes will count.


Testimony: Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Testimony of David J. Becker
Senior Counsel, PFAW and PFAW Foundation
Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
February 7, 2007

Listen to David's testimony: "Unauditable electronic voting machines have likely left a trail of disenfranchised voters throughout the country, but nowhere have the dangers of these devices been felt more deeply by voters than in Sarasota County, Florida"

David Becker

Click here to download the testimony as a PDF.

Madame Chairman, Ranking Member Bennett, Senators, good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today regarding this important subject. I bring greetings from our President Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way, a civil rights and civil liberties organization of over 1,000,000 members and activists. I am Senior Counsel at People For the American Way Foundation, responsible for our voting rights and election reform work. Prior to my current position, I served for seven years in both the current and previous administrations as a Senior Trial Attorney in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. In that capacity, I monitored dozens of elections in hundreds of polling places nationwide, and have observed thousands of voters casting ballots on all manner of equipment. Today, I am speaking on behalf of both People For the American Way and our Foundation and will submit more extensive written testimony for the record.

The right to vote is a bedrock of our American democracy and People For the American Way and our sister Foundation are committed to ensuring that this right is guaranteed to all eligible voters and is secure. Since the debacle of the 2000 election, People for the American Way Foundation and its key allies, have led the Election Protection Coalition efforts to ensure that every citizen has a right to vote and to have that vote counted. This work supplemented by litigation and People For the American Way’s legislative efforts has provided our two organizations with a depth of expertise on how we must continue to reform our election process in order to protect this most fundamental right to vote.

It is for this reason, Madame Chair, that we are particularly grateful for your leadership on the issue of election reform, and in particular voting technology. Unauditable electronic voting machines have likely left a trail of disenfranchised voters throughout the country, but nowhere have the dangers of these devices been felt more deeply by voters than in Sarasota County, Florida. People For the American Way Foundation currently serves as co-counsel for a group of Republican, Democratic, and unaffiliated voters in Sarasota County, and I serve as People For Foundation’s lead counsel in this litigation. The facts as they occurred in Sarasota are illustrative of the problems resulting from the use of unauditable electronic voting machines – problems that must be corrected in time for the 2008 elections.

In the November election, Sarasota County used paperless, unauditable electronic voting machines. The race to succeed Katherine Harris in Florida’s 13th Congressional district was on the ballot there, and it was arguably the most contested race on the entire ballot in Sarasota County. Nevertheless, Sarasota County’s voting machines failed to register a vote for approximately 18,000 voters in that race – more than one out of every seven voters who attempted to vote on these machines. Even though almost 15 percent of the voters in Sarasota County saw their votes disappear in this election, the state certified the winner by a margin of only 369 votes – less than 0.2 percent of the total vote. Meanwhile, dozens of voters have submitted sworn testimony that the machines changed, or flipped, their votes, or required multiple attempts to register their votes, or completely failed to register their votes at all.

Experts who testified in this litigation unanimously confirmed what we feared: that the failure to register 18,000 votes in a hotly contested congressional race could not be consistent with the will of the voters, and likely changed the outcome of the election. Even an expert retained by the voting machine vendor shares the view that if even a small fraction of these votes had not been lost, the outcome of the election would have been different.

All the experts agree that the rate of lost votes in Sarasota County in the 13th district race was “clearly extraordinary” and “anomalous,” if not unprecedented. Experts in the field agree we could normally expect to see 2.5 percent of the ballots fail to indicate a vote in this race, so the unusually high number of votes that disappeared cannot be attributed to voters choosing not to vote in that race. Indeed, only 2.5 percent of paper absentee ballots in Sarasota County failed to indicate a vote in this race, and rates in surrounding counties that include the 13th district were also around 2.5 percent. Sarasota County’s paperless electronic machines had a lost vote rate six times higher. As further demonstration of this point, Sarasota County’s machines registered more votes in the race for hospital board than in the race for Congress.

David Becker with Sen. Feinstein

David Becker with Sen. Feinstein

David Becker with Sen. Feinstein

David Becker, testifying

The county, and the election machine manufacturer, would have us believe that one out of seven voters who voted on the machines chose not to vote in this race, or that they were simply so confused that they could not register their votes properly, notwithstanding the fact that only one out of forty who voted on paper did not register a vote. This assertion is simply ludicrous. Even the most confusing elections in recent memory have not resulted in the number of lost votes we saw in this race. For instance, the notoriously confusing butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2000 resulted in only around 5 percent of the ballots failing to be counted in the presidential race. Frankly, it is an insult to Sarasota County voters for anyone to try to assert that this congressional race was so confusing to them – and to only those voters who voted on the unauditable voting machines – that they were almost three times more confused than the voters in Palm Beach in 2000.

All experts in the Sarasota case agree that machine error cannot be ruled out as a cause of the excessive number of lost votes. Even the expert for the voting machine company admitted this while others testified that machine error is the likely cause of a substantial portion of the lost votes. To know for sure, of course, the machines must be examined by independent experts, which election officials and the voting machine company continue to oppose, even though an investigation would likely either confirm or refute the possibility that machine error led to the disenfranchisement of these thousands of Sarasota County voters.

Finally, the experts agree that had the voters’ intent been properly recorded in Sarasota County, there is little doubt that the outcome would have been different. The expert for the voting machine company stated that there is essentially a 100 percent chance that the candidate whom the state of Florida certified as the winner would have been defeated if the rate of lost votes was consistent with what election experts would expect, and what it was in other counties. The company expert agreed with the other experts that even if only a small fraction of the lost votes was due to machine error – say, 2000 votes, or less than two percent of the votes cast in Sarasota County – the official outcome of the election would likely have been reversed.

Since the machines in use in Sarasota County were paperless, unauditable machines, there is no way to determine to what precise degree the voters’ intent diverged from the tallies prepared in secret inside the machines. If there had been verifiable paper trails produced at the time of voting, we could compare those to the computer tallies, and determine not only the likely source of the problem, but also the true winner of the race. Sadly, because Sarasota County did not require verifiable audit trails, the only remedy that can possibly restore the constitutional rights of voters in Sarasota is a revote at this point.

Madame Chair, thank you again for your commitment to addressing this most pressing issue of voting technology. With the country facing enormous turnout for the elections in 2008 which will decide control of Congress and the presidency, as well as thousands of down-ballot races, the need for election reform in this country is urgent. As has been the case in the past three federal elections, we expect that many of these races will be close. Americans deserve to know that they will cast a vote that will be counted – and, if necessary, recounted, by fair and independent observers. This is not a partisan issue – regardless of the outcome in the 13th district race, or any other race where votes are cast on unauditable electronic machines, we must remember that it is the voters, and their votes, that are the foundation of our democracy. I can say without reservation that had a different winner been certified in the 13th congressional district race, People For the American Way and its Foundation would still be fighting for the rights of Sarasota County’s voters to be represented by the Congressperson of their true choice. We look forward to working with you and the Committee in the future on comprehensive election reform that will ensure that every eligible voter can cast a ballot that is counted, and that no voter ever has to risk having their vote evaporate again.