House task force oks more tests on Fla.voting machines

A House task force voted Tuesday for additional tests on voting machines in a contested election after receiving a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that said previous tests did not provide “reasonable assurance” that the machines functioned properly.

The GAO report was made public at a hearing Tuesday and is the initial review of its investigation into voting irregularities in the contested congressional election in Florida’s 13th district.

{mosads}The GAO had been examining previous testing. It will now conduct its own.

After discussing the report with GAO officials, the task force voted unanimously to move forward with new tests.

“We found that some of the prior tests and reviews provide assurance that the voting machines in Sarasota County functioned correctly, but they are not enough to provide reasonable assurance that the iVotronic DRE voting systems did not contribute to the [irregularities],” said Dr. Naba Barkakati, who is leading the investigation for GAO.

GAO will conduct three types of tests on the electronic voting machines: firmware verification testing, ballot testing and calibration testing. It will ask to test 115 machines, compared to the six Florida tested after the election.

Barkakati said testing is unlikely to be done until late November or early December, due to the availability of the voting machines. The testing itself is set to take two weeks.

He said the testing would bring the matter to a close, providing the required “reasonable assurance.”

The panel has been tasked with investigating the contested election, in which Democrat Christine Jennings fell to now-Rep. Vern Buchanan (R) by fewer than 400 votes.

Jennings alleges that voting machine malfunctions caused a massive undervote, or ballots that didn’t include votes in the House race, and affected the outcome. About 18,000 such ballots turned up in Sarasota County.

She is running against Buchanan again in 2008.