BBV: Lawsuit Challenges Florida Ballot Recount Rules (FL)

[Bushfire]

MIAMI (Reuters) - Voting rights groups (ACLU & Common Cause) sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state's disputed 2000 presidential election voting.

The lawsuit said the rule was "illogical" and rested on the questionable assumption that electronic voting machines perform flawlessly 100 percent of the time. It also said the rule violated a Florida law that expressly requires manual recounts of certain ballots if the margin in an election is less than 0.25 percent of the votes cast.

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Fifteen Florida counties containing about half the state's population use electronic touch-screen voting machines. They include the three most populous counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach -- that were at the heart of the 2000 punch card ballot recount battle.

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Audit tests using the new touch-screen machines last year showed some of the data recorded on the Miami-Dade machines were not transferred to electronic logs that would need to be reviewed in a recount.

more...

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5611409&pageNumber=0

on edit: plaintiff should read ACLU of FL. seems they are ahead of the national group on BBV.