GAO Report on Sarasota Lost Votes "Fatally Flawed," According to Researchers
by Susan Pynchon
“Our year-long investigation into the CD-13 race contradicts the GAO’s findings. The GAO ignored serious, documented voting system failures that indisputably contributed to the high undervotes in the CD-13 race,” said Susan Pynchon, FFEC executive director. “Our two reports, Sarasota’s Vanished Votes and Lost Votes in Florida in the November 2006 Election may be viewed on line at www.FloridaFairElections.org.”
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Pynchon said that the researchers have the maintenance and repair records to prove that the voting machines failed all across the county.
“Half of Sarasota’s precincts reported machine problems so severe that they required machines to be repaired or taken out of service, she explained. “We have 455 reports of machine problems during this election.”
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Supporting those records, she noted, were personal accounts and affidavits from individuals who complained about problems getting the machines to register their votes in the CD-13 race.
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One of the most serious shortcomings of the GAO testing, they said, was the failure to use sequestered machines—that is, voting machines with high undervotes that were locked away after the election for use in future testing to determine the cause of the problems. Yet, half of the 114 machines used for the GAO’s firmware testing had not been sequestered. Three of the ten machines used in the ballot testing were not sequestered, and neither of the two machines used for calibration testing had been sequestered!
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“That was the point of sequestering the machines—to put together all the machines that were suspect and make sure that everyone knew that they couldn’t be altered.” Pynchon asked. ”Why would you choose machines that didn’t have high undervotes and weren’t carefully preserved for testing? Any of the components that failed during the election could have been replaced or repaired without leaving any trace on the audit logs checked by the GAO investigators.”
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Many other salient points are made in the article about the GAO report's deficiencies.
Link:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_susan_py_080213_gao_report_on_saraso.htm