I’m with Dean
From the St. Petersburg Times:
Republican Vern Buchanan might be the official winner in a messy Sarasota-area congressional race, but Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says the Democratic-controlled Congress should not seat Buchanan without another election.“Absolutely not,” Dean said… “You cannot seat someone if you don’t have an election that’s valid.
“This election is not valid. There are 18,000 people who may have voted, and we don’t know what happened to their votes,” Dean said.
Democrat Christine Jennings has asked for a revote, but “a little-known provision in the U.S. Constitution gives the House the final decision on who sits in its chamber”. At the very least, Congress should investigate this matter. Short of calling Jennings the winner, which would be politically risky for Democrats, it should demand a revote. It would be the only way to ensure the representational legitimacy of Florida’s 13th congressional district.
For more on this controversy, see my post “Stealing Sarasota” here.
13 Responses to “I’m with Dean”
I agree. I can accept some margin of error in an election but not discrepancies this large.
Yep, election integrity must come first.
The undervote for that seat in 2000 was even larger, both in total votes and percentage. And they were still using paper ballots then. There’s half a dozen or more other races in the county with even larger undervotes this time around.
From looking over the complete ballot results for the county, it looks to me like most likely hypothesis is that a lot of people showed up to vote the “front page” of the ballot where the Governor and Senate races were, and then ignored all the down-ballot items. ALL other county-wide races had major undervotes, and everything down-ballot had undervotes comparable or larger than the Buchanan/Jennings race.
In particular, the smallest undervote was in the Harris/Nelson race, and it’s not tough to believe that a lot of people (both GOP and Dem) showed up to vote against Harris and for Charlie Crist, and for little else.
If it can be shown that there was a machine malfunction or fraud, by all means, let’s have another election. If it can’t, then accept that folks have the right to NOT vote a race if they don’t want to, and even have the right to be stupid and miss voting a race. But if the machines were working correctly, seat the declared winner, not the declared loser.
Yo Snarky whut up man?
I disagree Tully. Lots of people only vote for national races and don’t know the county candidates. I doubt many vote for a US Senator but not a US Congressman. Maybe you can cite any such case. Here’s a cheap and simple solution. Both parties agree on a reputable market research firm, pick a representative sample of voters from the contested areas and ask them “did you vote for a US senator, a US congressman or both?” Total cost? around $25,000.
Look at how close the vote is for the Republican Senate and Congressional candidates. Do you believe only Democrats decided to skip voting for a House representative?
This I think misrepresents the data you linked to. In fact, the undervote for a US House Rep was higher than Ag Commissioner or any state rep. That makes no sense at all. It smells of foul play, and instead of your suggestion to prove machine malfunction or vote fraud, it makes far more sense to ask the voters themselves if they intentionally declined to vote for a US House Rep.
Gettin back in the game. I was kind of burnt out in November.
I been hanging around, just not commenting anywhere.
Did the Dems request that Rep Sanchez of CA not be seated when they determined that a number of illegals voted for her?
Let us not forget, the Dems asked for these stupid machines.
Could it be that the people didn’t like either candidate?
Maybe you can cite any such case.
I already did. Same race, year 2000, an undervote of 25K plus in FL-13 versus the FL Senate race undervote of 7K. With PAPER ballots. Not just a larger undervote, but a higher percentage of undervotes. And I’m willing to wager that all the races with high undervotes this time around were on the second and later “pages” of the ballot (or of most ballots, as the ballots would differ from precinct to precinct). If so, that would support my speculation that people showed up to vote the Harris/Nelson race or the governer’s race, voted it and the other items on the “front page,” and then skipped the rest unless it was something they gave a hoot about.
Jennings is pursuing the hardware issues in her contest (and rightly so–she has the right to contest and in that close a race she should close out the possibility of machine error before conceding) and no first-hand fraud allegations have surfaced. If she can’t make a good case of the “hardware” contest, there’s no real justification for taking it further. It’s just whining.
The election was held, it was close, and Jennings lost. Unless there is demonstrated machine malfunction or fraud exposed–which she can show through the contest–whining about the results and demanding a do-over is nothing more than a case of “make ‘em vote until WE win.” Childish.
Kurt, thats weak and incorrect.
Add to that investigation a background check of the parties involved in the counting, to see if they’ve been a part of any systematic vote-counting fraud in the same district over that time period. Couldn’t hurt to look at all options and eliminate them reasonably.
Snark, good to see you back.
Tully,
Your own link doesn’t back up your hypothesis. Look at the undervote numbers for the lower level races and you’ll see much lower numbers for them than for the U.S. House race.
I did look, Jim. I do voter demographics professionally, for candidates of both parties (and never ever for parties–I only work for candidates I would vote for). I’ve seen this pattern many times before. What I see, and what you would see if you read the whole thing analytically, is that many of those “lower undervote” races you cite do not cover the entire county and are for about a third of the precincts or less.
That doesn’t do anything at all to “shake” the “voter apathy combined with down-ballot race placement” hypothesis. People often give a hoot about only one race, and on a long ballot will vote the “front page” (and sometimes not even all of that) and then flip down to the race they do care about, ignore the rest, and register their vote. The machine then reminds them of all the races where they have NOT registered a vote, and they have to affirm that they’re not voting those races before the vote is recorded.
Also note the results in the provisional ballots, which reflect the same general pattern as the machine totals. As does the advance machine voting. Yet the provisional ballots were paper and were counted separately. Even the paper absentee ballots show over double the rate of undervote for the FL-13 race than they do for the Senate and Gov races, a real indicator of voter apathy for that particular race as they can be filled out at the voter’s leisure, and absentee ballots are generally requested by extremely consistent voters.
Do you know where the different races were placed on the machine ballot, and what the various amendments were? I do, because I bothered to check with Sarasota. On the front page were the statewide state-office races, then the local state rep race as appropriate to district/precinct, followed by the state-wide amendment referendums, then the US Senate race. The FL-13 US House race was on the top of the second “page,” county-wide, heading off the rest of the down-ballot. So go back and look again at the pattern. Remember also that people will skip down-ballot to vote local issues.
Do you know the party composition of Sarasota County registered voters? I do, because once again I bothered to check. 47% GOP, 31% Dem, 22% other/none.
As I said, unless machine error or outright vote fraud can be demonstrated, this shouldn’t go any farther. Jennings is contesting and should certainly get her investigation opportunity, but barring a showing of one of those two things the contest is a loser.