Kathy Dent's Feels Blue

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent had numerous problems with undervotes during the 2006 election. The Christine Jenning/Vern Buchanan recount became a national news story. Election Systems & Software warned Dent about machine problems. Both Dent and ES & S swore there were no machine irregularities. That was until the letter the ES & S letter to Dent became public.

Dent is once again having voting machine problems. Brad Friedman reports Diebold/Premier optical-scan system will not read ballots with blue ink. Dent could move to replace the Diebold/Premier machines. Instead she requires every precinct have black pens. Friedman points out the error of Denr's ways.

Since the state now requires paper ballots, Dent chose to install the newest Diebold/Premier optical-scan systems, the ones that don't read blue ink properly, despite the fact that they had not been federally tested or certified for use at the time. Florida does not require federal certification tests for voting systems before using them.

As I said before, Republicans heart Diebold.

ES&S Knew About District 13 Voting Machine Problems

Election Systems & Software sent this letter to Sarasota County election officials on August 15, 2006.

"It has come to our attention after a number of inquiries...that some of your screens are exhibiting slow response times...We have determined that the delayed response time is a result of a smoothing filter that was added...In some cases, the time lapse on these consistent reads is beyond the normal time a voter would expect."

Kathy Dent said it was too close to the election to update the equipment. She contends that the problems cited by ES&S had no affect on the undervote. That is debatable.

During early voting, 4 voters complained that their votes weren't recorded. Dent sent out an email calling the situation "critical." Voter Kenneth Sanderson had to twice attempt to vote for Christine Jennings.

"I'm an ex-poll worker, so I understand all the problems that can happen," he said. "I don't hold much confidence in machines."

It appears ES&S and Dent knew about the problems and fail to go public with the information. For geekheads: this appears to be the problem from the letter.

We have determined that the delayed response time is the result of a smoothing filter that was added to iVotronic firmware versions 8.x and higher. The smoothing filter waits for a series of consistent touchscreen reads before a candidate is highlighted on the 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. The delayed response to touch may vary from terminal to terminal and also may not occur every single time a terminal is used.

All this time we heard Dent and ES&S swear up and down about the machines. Now we find out about this. Utterly fucking disgraceful.