Florida Candidate Demands New Election

Two days after the election, despite claims in the press that there were "no major problems" with e-voting systems, it became clear that Sarasota County in Florida had a pretty serious problem to deal with as somewhere between 8,000 and 18,000 votes on e-voting machines appeared to have gone missing. There were various explanations, but it seems like the machines just didn't record the votes when people hit the touchscreen. levi stein writes in to let us know that the Congressional candidate who lost that election by a mere 369 votes, Christine Jennings, is challenging the election and demanding a new election. She's pointing out that there was clearly something wrong with the machine as the missing votes don't fit statistically with votes from any other county in the district, and that this particularly county had the majority voting in her favor (suggesting those missing votes very likely would have tipped the election). It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the lawsuit she's filed, as it could open up plenty of similar lawsuits in other areas. Hopefully, the risk of such lawsuits will be just one more thing that elections officials will take into account when deciding whether or not to trust their elections to these problematic machines.