We hear that the state’s audit team has concluded their examination of Tuesday’s mock vote, and attributed any discrepancies that cropped up during the exercise to human error.
On Tuesday, the state’s “mock vote” — its first run of tests on electronic voting machines in Florida’s Sarasota County — unexpectedly handed five extra votes to Democrat Christine Jennings, out of 251 ballots cast. At the time, Florida Division of Elections officials predicted they were the result of human error. After monitoring video of the votes they reaffirmed that belief, deciding that all five votes were the result of mistakes by election officials doing the voting.
On Friday, the audit moves on to its second phase, a similar run of tests on five machines that were actually used on Election Day.
Meanwhile, Jennings’ legal contest of the election results is on hold pending the state’s audit. If the process concludes without discovering any system errors, Jennings’ camp would have to convince the state judge to allow them to run independent tests. Jennings’ lawyer has strongly criticized the audit as insufficient.
More later.
Update: Jennings has added ES&S to their lawsuit challenging the election results, a step necessary to force the company to grant access to the machines’ “source code,” the company’s software embedded in each machine.
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