2nd test of Sarasota election begins today

In the first of two tests this week of Sarasota County's election system, humans goofed a few times, enough to create less than a dozen discrepancies in the tallies of some 250 ballots.

But the electronic touch-screen machines used in the test operated flawlessly, according to Secretary of State Sue Cobb.

However, District 13 congressional candidate Christine Jennings called for improvements to the testing process.

The improvements would include bringing in independent experts as auditors instead of the state's own elections division employees.

Also, Jennings called for voting machines to be positioned horizontally on table tops, like they were in the real world on Nov. 7.

Instead, the machines were propped up vertically for the test. That could affect the way voters touch the screens to get their votes recorded, said Jennings' campaign officials.

Also, the people conducting the mock election should include some elderly voters to better mirror the actual demographics of those voting in the November election, campaign officials said.

"This isn't just about winning and losing an election," Jennings said. "It's about finding out what went wrong with our voting system. This is a test case for the entire nation -- we must get this right."

State employees will conduct the second test from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. today -- according to the state's previously adopted plan, said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's office.

If the Jennings campaign seeks a broader test, the campaign should conduct one, Nash said.

"Certainly the more information out there the better," said Nash. "But I think that a lot of the Jennings campaign complaints ... are unfounded."

Jennings, a Democrat, lost the Nov. 7 election to Republican Vern Buchanan by just 369 votes.

Secretary of State Sue Cobb ordered an extensive audit of the election after the results showed an unusually high number of "undervotes" in the District 13 congressional race.

More than 18,000 ballots cast in the county had no votes for either candidate in that race. That's an undervote rate of nearly 15 percent.

In surrounding counties, the undervote rate in that race was less than 3 percent.

The first test was conducted Tuesday when state elections officials cast votes according to a predetermined script on four machines not used in the actual election.

The results recorded by the machines contained a total of 10 discrepancies.

The auditors worked Wednesday and Thursday to review both the script and videotapes of the test voting. They determined that one discrepancy was due to a human error in writing the script.

The rest of the errors came when test voters failed to correctly follow the directions of auditors reading from their test scripts, Nash said.

"Everything went great today," she said. "In first two hours, we were able to resolve all the discrepancies and they were in fact due to human errors. We found there were no anomalies with the machines. They operated as designed and they accurately recorded the voter's intent."

Jennings, however, expressed concern that the state employees conducting the test "have a clear conflict of interest." The employees are sensitive to criticism over their agency's approval of electronic voting machines, the Jennings campaign said.

Also, the fact the state officials placed the voting machines in vertical positions prevented the test voters from accidentally touching other parts of the screen. So, the test won't reveal if those types of contacts affected the results.

The Jennings campaign also cited several concerns about the scripts used to establish the "vote patterns" for the test. The script failed to include patterns in which voters change or verify their selections for various offices.

The script also contained at least one blatant error that created a "nonsensical pattern," according to the Jennings campaign.

According to Nash, the state's auditors are "extremely qualified, objective and have an interest in the integrity of the elections in Florida."

"There's absolutely no conflict of interest," she added. "Our goal is the same as the supervisors' goal, which is to make sure the election system is fair and accurate and integrity is not compromised.

"If there was a problem with the machines, we would certainly want to know about it," she added.

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