A post-election report filed with the state Division of Elections by the Sarasota County Canvassing Board offers no additional details on the cause of the vote machine glitch that delayed early voting shortly after a nearby rally attended mostly by African-Americans and featuring then-Senate candidate Kendrick Meek.
Rita Ferrandino, chair of the Sarasota County Democratic Party, called the mechanical error “voter suppression,” and the head of the local NAACP chapter said his organization planned to closely monitor voting at the site where the glitch occurred.
In its “Conduct of Election Report,” the canvassing board — whose membership includes Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent, responsible for overseeing the election — lists all of the technical failures that occurred during the election, as well as staff mistakes.
The report describes the early vote failure as the result of an “intermittent signal on network port switch.” Dent told The Florida Independent the morning after the glitch that the voting site lost “connectivity” with her main office, which delayed voting by around 40 minutes. The report indicates that elections staff replaced the “network switch and network cables” to correct the problem, and offers no other information.
The full Conduct of Election Report:
