By: E&P Staff While the midterm elections may be over for nearly everyone -- including, this afternon, even Sen. George Allen of Virginia -- several races remain contested or uncertain. One is in Florida, where a review by the Herald- Tribune in Sarasotra found that the county voting results showed that "in almost every precinct a high percentage of voters didn't cast ballots in the hotly contested 13th Congressional District, a trend that likely affected the outcome of the race."
Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes -- and more than 18,000 voters who showed voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.
"That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate -- a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote," the paper reported today. It said 120 readers had contacted the paper over worries about this issue after voting.
If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to the Herald-Tribune's review.
"While some have speculated that people simply chose not to vote in the District 13 race, many voters say the unusual undervote was caused by badly designed touch-screen ballots, which they say hid the race or made it hard to verify if they had cast their vote," the paper observed.
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