Paul Kiel November 22, 2006, 12:01 PM

There was already strong evidence that the worryingly high “undervote” in the congressional race in Florida’s Sarasota County had skewed the results of the election there.

But The Orlando Sentinel actually went through nearly all of the roughly 18,000 ballots on electronic voting machines where voters had failed to register a vote in the congressional race, but had voted in the other races, and found that the voters were mostly Democrats.

From the Sentinel:

The group of nearly 18,000 voters that registered no choice in Sarasota’s disputed congressional election solidly backed Democratic candidates in all five of Florida’s statewide races, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of ballot data shows.

Among these voters, even the weakest Democrat — agriculture-commissioner candidate Eric Copeland — outpaced a much-better-known Republican incumbent by 551 votes….

Republican Vern Buchanan’s 369-vote victory was certified by state officials Monday. His camp says that, although people may have skipped the race — intentionally or not — there is no evidence that votes went missing.

But the results of the Sentinel analysis, two experts said, warrant additional investigation.

“Wow,” University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said. “That’s very suggestive — I’d even say strongly suggestive — that if there had been votes recorded, she [Jennings] would have won that House seat.”…

The analysis of the so-called “undervotes” examined the races for U.S. Senate, governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.

The results showed that the undervoted ballots skewed Democratic in all of those races, even in the three races in which the county as a whole went Republican.

Election 2006