Sarasota (CD 13) court filings

The Herald Tribune has archived the many court filings by the Jennings campaign, on November 20, on their website devoted to the “Sarasota anomaly.” I’ve downloaded three of the primary filings, and have archived them on our website:

Here are the key conclusions from Stewart’s declaration, quoted directly from his report (pages 2-3), which gives a good summary of the points of contention in the case:

1. Sarasota County undervote rates for the 13th congressional district race were substantially higher than the undervote rates observed in the other counties that comprise the district. Various comparisons of the undervote rates that were produced in different counties, on different machines, and under different modes of voting (i.e., absentee voting, early voting, and Election Day voting) lead clearly to the conclusion that these differences were caused by the use of the iVotronic electronic voting machine in Sarasota County. The fact that undervote rates in Sarasota County were so much higher than in the rest of the district allows us to rule out the possibility that Sarasota County’s undervote rates were caused by factors such as voter revulsion to a negative campaign or dissatisfaction with both candidates.
2. The undervote rate in the 13th district was anomalous when compared to other countywide races that were contested in Sarasota County. The undervote rate for early voting in the 13th district race was greater than for any other item on the countywide ballot. The undervote rate for Election Day voting exceeded that for most of the items on the countywide ballot. In stark contrast, the undervote rate for absentee voting was among the lowest for all countywide races.
3. The number of excess undervotes caused by the use of the iVotronic machines in Sarasota County was between 13,209 and 14,739 votes. This estimate was based on a study of the patterns among the undervotes cast on other countywide races in Sarasota County.
4. The size of the excess undervote in Sarasota County, coupled with the amount of support received by Jennings among ballots actually counted in Sarasota County, make it likely that had the electronic machines not malfunctioned, Jennings would have won the election by at least 739 votes, and possibly by as many as 825 votes. This analysis is based on two methods, one that takes Sarasota County as a single unit, and another that simulates the allocation of the excess undervote to Jennings and Buchanan on a precinct-by- precinct basis.
5. The level of undervoting experienced using electronic voting machines in Sarasota County for the 13th congressional district greatly exceeds the undervote rates that were estimated to have occurred in other well-established cases of voter confusion. This suggests a substantial possibility that the exaggerated undervote rates in Sarasota County were not solely due to voter confusion, but also caused by factors related to machine malfunction.