Florida race shows why electronic voting sucks

The race to fill Rep. Katherine Harris' seat in Congress illustrates the degree of the problem when it comes to using electronic voting machines. The Orlando Sentinel reports that nearly 18,000 voters registered "no choice" in the race for Congress between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings (about 15% of Sacramento County). There is little to no chance that all of these people chose not to vote for Congress since these same people chose to vote for agriculture commissioner on the same ballot.

Buchanan won by 369 votes based on the votes that were registered. As the article mentions though, the missing votes solidly backed Democrats in the five statewide races. Unfortunately, the machines contain no paper trail to audit the results.

"Wow," University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said. "That's very suggestive -- I'd even say strongly suggestive -- that if there had been votes recorded, she [Jennings] would have won that House seat."

David Dill, an electronic-voting expert at Stanford University, put it this way: "It seems to establish with certainty that more Democrats are represented in those undervoted ballots."

The Sentinel reviewed records of 17,846 touch-screen ballots that included no vote in the tightly contested 13th District congressional race to determine whom voters selected in other major races.