If there was any doubts as to whether Democrats would take a hands-on approach to the election dispute in Florida’s 13th District, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA) resolved them late last week.
Millender-McDonald, the Chairwoman of the committee in charge of handling Democrat Christine Jennings’ challenge of the election results, sent a pointed letter last Thursday to the Florida appeals court hearing the case, warning that if the courts did not adequately investigate the case, then Congress would be forced to get involved.
In February, the appeals court will decide whether to uphold a lower court’s ruling preventing Jennings from examining the voting machines’ source code as part of her election contest. Jennings’ lawyers, who’ve offered testimony from dozens of voters about problems with the machines and say they could offer hundreds more, say they need access to the source code in order to adequately investigate the cause of the problems.
In the letter, Millender-McDonald wrote that her “Committee is closely following the course of the litigation now underway in Florida” and that it was “of concern” that Jennings hadn’t received access “to the hardware and software (including the source code) needed to test the contestant’s central claim: voting machine malfunction.”
“[R]esolution of these issues may obviate the need for the House to address them,” the Chairwoman noted.