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Review of contested election advances |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 06/15/07 07:12 PM [ET] |
The task force assigned to examine the contested election in Florida’s 13th district voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with a review plan crafted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and set a target completion date of July 27.
After some testy exchanges over the extent to which Republicans are involved in the process, Chairman Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) and panel members Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) all voted in favor of the plan, which could lead to further testing of the voting machines in Sarasota County.
Democrat Christine Jennings is contesting her loss to Rep. Vern Buchanan (R) in November’s election. She lost by 369 votes and contends that voting machine malfunctions in Sarasota County caused her defeat.
The panel, formed in March, assigned the GAO to conduct a review of the election after the case stalled in Florida courts.
The GAO’s objective is described in the plan as to discover “to what extent could the voting machines have contributed to the large undervote” — 18,000 Sarasota County ballots did not include a vote in the race — and to decide whether extra testing is necessary.
The GAO’s approach involves answering three questions in addition to that one: what voting equipment was used and how it was used, what is the scope of the undervote, and what reviews were conducted before the election.
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