In a ruling handed down today, a Florida judge denied access to voting machines’ source code by experts for Democrat Christine Jennings and others.
Jennings, along with the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation and others, had asked the court to allow them access to the source code on voting machines used in Sarasota County, where they allege 18,000 votes were not counted.
Judge William L. Gary called their request “nothing more than conjecture and not supported by credible evidence,” and said that making the secret code available for scrutiny “would result in destroying or at least gutting the protections afforded those who own the trade secrets.”
A senior attorney on Jennings’ side of the suit called Gary’s ruling “an order without any legal basis whatsoever.”
The judge “denied the voters of Sarasota County the ability to look inside the ballot boxes, essentially, that they’re using to cast their ballot,” David Becker, attorney for the People for the American Way Foundation, told me. “We’re going to use every available avenue to see that this order is overturned.”
Update: Here’s the ruling.