MadCow Morning News Exposé on How Things Went South Down in Florida's 13th Congressional District...
By Brad Friedman on 11/17/2006, 4:35pm PT  

In a nifty and well-sourced bit of investigative journalism that makes The BRAD BLOG's muckracking heart go pitter-patter, an outfit known as Madcow Morning News (we wish they were called Washington Post) filed a peach of an exposé last Wednesday on Sarasota County's Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent, and Gary L. Greenhalgh, the ES&S voting machine company Vice-President with the questionable past, who appears to have serviced her.

The detailed reporting underscores our previous call for Dent to resign in light of her egregious failures in Florida's 13th district U.S. House race, where the voters are still paying the price. Please do yourself a favor and read the report in full.

Here's a few Dent money shots:

Ironically, while lobbying Sarasota County Commissioners in a successful campaign to spend millions on new touch screen electronic voting machines in 2001, one of Dent's primary arguments was that the new machines would lower the rate of uncounted votes, which then stood at barely one percent, versus the 13% undervote in the election last week.

"I do think we're going to see those numbers drop," Dent told Commissioners. "We're looking more for accuracy and the confidence that the voters have in the system."

And this ironic plum from Greelhalgh --- whom Madcow reports as regularly being in perilously close proximity to those convicted of bribery and other kickbacks to elections officials --- from back in 1985:

"The problem with computer-assisted voting systems is that they centralize the opportunity for fraud," Greenhalgh said, in a July 29, 1985 story in the New York Times.

"There is a massive potential for problems."

Reported the Times: "Mr. Greenhalgh said that while lever-type voting machines could have their counts rigged only machine by machine, counting votes by computer was done at one central site in most counties."

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG perennial "Old Turk")

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