Something Rotten in Sarasota

The mystery of 18,000 "lost" votes in Sarasota, Florida is beginning to unravel. ES&S the manufacturer of the e-voting machines in question informed the Sarasota Supervisor of Elections, Kathlene Dent, prior to the November election that a "glitch" in the software could result in inaccurate vote counts. Ms. Dent did nothing in response to the information. Previous to this revelation the company maintained that it's machines worked perfectly. According to the August 15, 2006 letter received by Ms. Dent, the addition of a smoothing filter to a later firmware version caused machines to delay in registering a voter's selection. The filter, "waits for a series of consistent touchscreen reads before a candidate's name is highlighted on a ballot. In some cases the time lapse on these consistent reads is beyond the normal time a voter would expect to have their selection highlighted." Ms. Dent and ES&S claim they did not have time to certify a firmware patch to fix the problem before the election. Their claims of innocence ring hollow in light of the fact that they failed to disclose this problem in discovery to litigants in civil suits concerning the botched 13th Congressional District election. A re-vote is obviously necessary and the US House of Representatives should require one.