# FL-13: Dem Candidate Robbed of Victory by Computer Glitch/Hack? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 9, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785 "2006-11-09T23:48:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/21 "2007-03-16T12:34:52Z")
[Update](http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/15/State/Sarasota_officials_ig.shtml) From the link: > [@](#): > > The maker of the voting machines used in last fall’s disputed Sarasota area congressional race warned state and county officials that voters might have trouble recording their votes but the company’s advice for fixing the problem went unheeded. > > And as the controversy swirled into another national debate about another troubled Florida election, state and county officials never told anyone about the company warning that some of its touch-screen machines could produce a seconds-long delay before recording votes. > > An Aug. 15 letter from Election Systems & Software told state and county officials about “slow response times” in recording votes on some of its machines. The company said an “update to the firmware” was required and also suggested counties post signs and train poll workers and voters about the need to press firmly for several seconds to ensure that the machine properly recorded the vote. > > That never happened in Sarasota County. > > And although state, county and company officials insist the accuracy of the vote counting was not in jeopardy, Pasco County got the same letter and chose not to use the 40 affected machines on Election Day in November. > > **“It wasn’t any big deal,” Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent said Wednesday.** and > [@](#): > > At issue: More than 18,000 people, or 13 percent of all voters, did not record a vote in the race, a rate higher than in other counties in the congressional district. On election day and afterward many voters complained that they had tried to vote in the race, but said the machine wouldn’t take their ballot. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/22 "2007-03-16T12:40:56Z")
From this article in the [Sarasota Herald Tribune](http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/NEWS/611090589/-1/NEWS0521) > [@](#): > > Ironically, Dent – who declined to be interviewed outside a press conference – first won her post in the shadow of another recount controversy, the infamous 2000 presidential election. > > A Republican Party activist and legal administrator in her husband’s law firm, Dent beat Brown in the general election after a bitter GOP primary. She emphasized her administrative skills in the campaign, but has found the position to be anything but a simple ministerial job. > > Through most of her tenure she has been dogged by criticism for urging the county to invest in the touch-screen voting machines. > > Opponents of the system have questioned the machines’ security, accountability and reliability. This year, they succeeded in getting a voter mandate to force the county to switch to a system that leaves a paper trail. > > Audrey Bear, a Sarasota attorney who monitored the Tuesday election for Democrats, didn’t blame Dent directly for all the alleged voting irregularities. But she said Dent failed to vigorously investigate issues raised by voters. > > “The way she is responding is dismissive of the people who honestly had problems with their ballots,” Bear said. > > Brown was more harsh, saying Dent had ample time to address ballot complaints that first arose during early voting before Election Day. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/23 "2007-03-18T10:19:52Z")
My question would be, why the problems with casting votes _in just that one race_ in Sarasota County? If there was a problem with a delay before recording votes, wouldn’t it have affected voting in that county in races up and down the ballot? But as I showed above @10, the House race was the only one affected. It got two and a half times as many undervotes _as the freakin’ Ag Commissioner race_. So I can’t see how that explains anything. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/24 "2007-03-19T19:19:53Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] If this is voter fraud, it’s the most arcane attempt at it I’ve ever heard of. They would have to fraudulently register me to vote by absentee ballot and then steal the ballot before it got to me. Furthermore, they would have to create two lists of absentee voters and make sure that when the state election people looked me up in their computers, they didn’t find my name. But if it’s merely a mistake, it’s also a weird mistake. How did my name get on the list of absentee voters that this political candidate’s committee used to send their campaign literature to? The Florida State Election Board told me that they will contact the campaign committee of this candidate and try to figure out how my name got on their list. I haven’t heard anything back from them since calling them almost a month ago. [/QUOTE] Not that arcane. They send that card to Wendell Wagner’s 1975 address. The guy living there looks at it and says, “Doesn’t live here” and sticks it back in the mailbox. It then goes back to the return address - coincidentally the person/organization that registered you as an absentee voter. How yours got where it got? Don’t know. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2007, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/25 "2007-03-21T14:47:46Z")
Merijeek, I think you’ve misunderstood what I was saying. The scenario you’re describing would be even more arcane than the one that happened. As far as I know, nobody sent any political advertisement postcards to me at the last address I lived at in Sarasota. I left there in early June of 1974, incidentally. I have no idea if the house that I lived in then even still exists. I’ve only been back to Sarasota three times in thirty-three years, and I didn’t try to find that house any of those times. When somebody gets a political advertisement postcard that they aren’t interested in, they don’t stick it back in the mailbox. Nearly all the time they would simply throw it away. I’m not even certain that the U.S. Mail will return such a postcard to the sender. It’s the equivalent of junk mail. In any case, only the rare nitpicker like me would look at the card and say, “Why would I possibly get this card?” and then try to find out what happened. I lived in Sarasota from approximately early September of 1971 to early June of 1974 when I was an undergraduate at New College, except for the summers when I lived with my family in Ohio. As far as I can determine, there’s no reason why I should be on _any_ state list of people who lived in Sarasota, let alone a list that someone might have kept. I didn’t vote there, since my legal residence was in Ohio. I lived in the dorms the first two years. The third year I moved into a house with three other students. My name wasn’t on the lease. My name wasn’t in the phone book. I paid taxes based on my family’s address in Ohio, so I’m not listed as living there with the IRS or any state tax bureau. The postcard I got last year just before the election was addressed to me at my address in Maryland. It wasn’t forwarded from anywhere. It was a postcard from a political candidate for a state office in Florida. It said that I was registered to vote absentee. In other words, it claimed that my legal address was in Sarasota, while I was temporarily living at my real address in Maryland. I called the State Board of Elections in Florida, and they said that according to their records I wasn’t registered to vote absentee. They had no records of me at that address or any other. They said that they did give the names and temporary addresses of people who were registered to vote absentee to political candidates so the candidates could send political advertisements to all potential voters, but they had no idea why a political advertisement would reach me, since I wasn’t registered to vote absentee. If this was voter fraud, the people committing the fraud had to make a whole lot of fixes to the voting system to pull it off. They would have to put my name and address on the list of absentee voters, but then they would have to create a second list of absentee voters without my name so that when the people at the State Board of Elections checked it, my name wouldn’t be on it. They would have to grab the absentee ballot with my name on it before it was sent to me and fill it out. They would then send it in, but they would have to make sure it was read by some person or machine with access to the absentee list with my name on it. They would have to screw up somehow so that the absentee list with my name on it got sent to political candidates for their use in sending political advertisements. I don’t understand how voter fraud this complicated would work, but then I don’t understand how a simple mistake this complicated would work either. It’s possible, I suppose, that regardless whether this is a matter of voter fraud or some weird mistake, it’s purely a coincidence that I happened to live in Sarasota a long time age. That’s possible, I suppose, but I’ve only lived in eight counties in my life (and one of them wasn’t in the U.S.). It’s odd then that this postcard was from a political candidate from one of those counties. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2007, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/26 "2007-04-16T21:12:32Z")
Update: [A special House task force will convene tomorrow (Tuesday 4/17/07) to review the 13th District election results.](http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070416/NEWS/704160576/-1/xml) Watch for further developments. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/27 "2007-05-09T21:45:29Z")
Update: [House task force has voted (along party lines) to refer the 13th District election for further investigation by the Government Accountability Office.](http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/fl-13-task-force-will-turn-over-investigation-to-gao-2007-05-02.html) Chairman Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) says he hopes to see results within 45 days. Challenges to the contested results of four other House elections, however, have been [unanimously dismissed by the House Administration Committee.](http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4527) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2007, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785/28 "2007-05-12T18:35:25Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Challenges to the contested results of four other House elections, however, have been [unanimously dismissed by the House Administration Committee.](http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4527) [/QUOTE] [But maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t end there . . .](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x472431) See also [here.](http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4460) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fl-13-dem-candidate-robbed-of-victory-by-computer-glitch-hack/379785.md?page=1)