Ah Florida, my home state. Land of alligators, strip malls, and recounts. Today, from the Sarasota Herald Tribune, comes an update on the contest between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. You'll recall that Buchanan leads in their race to replace Katherine Harris by some 377 votes, but that more than 18,000 electronic votes have gone missing.

Why have they gone missing? For one thing, the machines in question do not leave a paper trail. But as today's Herald Tribune reports, something else is under suspicion: poor ballot design.

Nearly 13 percent of all ballots cast in Sarasota County did not have a vote in the District 13 [Jennings v. Buchannan] race compared to less than 5 percent in other counties in the district. "In engineering, when you have those kinds of results, you throw them out," said Ted Selker, director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. "This is a call to arms for ballot design."

This brings to mind another interesting study conducted by Ohio State University that suggests that a candidate whose name appears on the top of the ballot is likely to receive 2 to 6 percent more votes than if his or her name is listed lower down. Each state has it own rules on which candidate will appear first on ballots. In Florida the party of the sitting Governor gets top billing, which is illuminating, considering the closeness of the 2000 presidential election. Of course, in the race in question, it was Vern Buchanan's name on top.

Is it not more than a little troubling, given the closeness of our recent electoral contests, that we cannot, as a nation, set about standardizing our voting procedures? Why shouldn't we take national measures to insure that the process is uniform and fair?

The first legal challenge has been filed in the Florida House race to fill Katherine Harris' old seat. Democrat Christine Jennings' campaign filed a lawsuit to make sure that all the voting machines and documents remain in their exact election day condition during the recount. Also of concern to Jennings, who trails Republican Vern Buchannan by 373 votes with over 18,000 electronic votes still unaccounted for, is the fact that Republican Secretary of State Sue Cobb has hired FSU professor Alec Yasinac, a self-proclaimed Republican activist to double check the touch-screen results.

According to an article in the Miami Herald, Yasinac might not be the most impartial observer to oversee this process:

...Here's what he told the Tallahassee Democrat [newspaper] on Dec. 3, 2000, while wearing a "Bush Won" sign on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court: "I'll never be a passive political participant again."

Remember, the machines used in Sarasota County did not leave a paper trail. So are we to leave it to the likes of Alex Yasinac to decide what to make of 18,000 under-votes?

The Florida election debacle of 2000 lives on. In the race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris in Florida's 13th district there is -- of all things -- an electoral snafu.

The 2006 election between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings will be long noted as a particularly dirty fight. One in which a record amount of money was spent distorting each other's positions.

The real story is the vote in the 13th district. Or, more to the point, the undervote. In Sarasota County, the coverage on the razor thin margin of Buchanan's lead (373 votes) over Jennings has been front page news since the election. More than 18,000 voters in Manatee County are presumed to have skipped the congressional race on their touch screen ballots. The Bradenton Herald and Sarasota Herald-Tribune have detailed the raging controversy and the likely litigation that will follow any recount.

The battle looming though is over the way America votes. The touch screen voting system which fails to provide a paper trail is at the center of the controversy. Sarasota supervisor of election Kathy Dent wrote a letter to the Sarasota County Commission stating in part, "...I am going to urge the county commission to find necessary funds to purchase voting equipment which will satisfy the expression of the voters and current federal and state law."

Whether the election in the 13th district to replace Harris is decided by a recount, a special election or by Congress itself, the irony remains. The taint of voting irregularities, if not outright fraud, will be once again carefully monitored nationwide. As for Katherine Harris, she leaves the national political scene haunting the integrity of the electoral process itself.

Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan have offered precious little insight concerning their positions on the war in Iraq. In their campaign to succeed Rep. Katherine Harris in Florida's 13th district they have both stealthfully avoided the issue. For at least an hour last night that changed.

Appearing before a panel comprised of members of the Bradenton Chapter of Military Officers Association of America both candidates were asked to state their positions on Iraq and other issues. The Bradenton Herald reported Buchanan was aggressively challenged by Jennings when he tried to stereotype her as a proponent of a "cut and run" philosophy in the war in Iraq. She told the Veteran's Group she favored developing a "new strategy" which needs to "come from the military experts and not the politicians."

Buchanan has moved away from his previous "stay the course" position, instead adopting the newest Bush "flexible strategy" policy. A Sarasota newspaper, the Herald Tribune, noted in its coverage of the same debate that the audience, comprised mainly of veterans, was openly skeptical of Buchanan's claim that President Bush had a "strategy for winning the war."

The most remarkable thing about the campaign in the 13th congressional district though is the absence of any conscientious attempt by either candidate to take a stand - pro or con - on the disaster in Iraq. The most crucial and provocative issue of the election is a distant second behind the record amount of money being spent to buy a seat in congress.

Today the Commander in Chief visits Sarasota for the first time since the fateful day in 2001 - September 11th. He won't be reading to children though. Today he'll be in town to campaign for the $6-million-man. Vern "Money Bags" Buchanan.

President Bush is the end of a veritable conga line of Republican big shots. Last week Snarlin' Big Dick Cheney was in Sarasota for twenty minutes to tell the assembled $2,000-a-plate faithful what a grand fellow Buchanan is. Last Thursday it was the president's brother, FL Governor Jeb Bush to bestow the Bush family's top honor on Vern. "He's a good man," said Jeb of Money Bags. Coming along to keep Jeb company was Sen. Mel Martinez and Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney.

The contest in Florida's 13th district thankfully doesn't have any of the 16th district's "overly friendly"-with-teenage-boys nonsense.

But we do have Vern! Yes sir! Standing tall, leading the Republican fight to hang on to this seat is Vern "Money Bags" Buchanan. Vern has just infused nearly $3 million of his own car-dealership wealth (estimated to be $50 million) into the race to succeed political gadfly, Katherine Harris. Katherine, meanwhile, is busy self-destructing in her beleaguered campaign for the U.S. Senate against Bill Nelson.

Car salesman...oops...I mean business entrepreneur, Vern Buchanan, is bound and determined to prove that anyone can buy the American Dream. It's just that some dreams are more expensive than others.

As Republican Rep. Christopher Shays notices his party's ship-of-state taking on water as it drifts towards port (the port of Nov. 7th) he has reached a point of panic. His Democratic opponent, Diane Farrell, is reaching more and more voters in their Connecticut congressional district. His party is reeling from the cover-up scandal involving Speaker Hastert.

So Shays has abandoned the issues of 2006. Shamelessly he has reached back for the old reliable trick: Oh, yeah? Well what about Chappaquiddick...? The neo-con approach to inspiring the electorate.

Another pivotal House race is being fought by another desperate Republican in the 13th district in Florida. Vern Buchanan has, to date, stuffed well over $2 million of his own dollars into his quest to go to Washington. The voters in this overwhelmingly red district aren't buying his negative spiel though. Twice these voters have elected Katherine Harris to Congress yet they find Buchanan to be just a bit over the top.

See the latest poll numbers on the Florida race, after the jump.

As the Mark Foley debacle continues to spin, unabated, the larger question today seems to be one for the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Namely: What did you know Mr. Speaker and when did you stop knowing it? Or... has the spin cycle finally worn out on the Republican machine?

Meanwhile at the White House, the President of the United States remains true to form -- nearly incapable of telling the truth on anything unless the matter has first been leaked to the press or found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

By way of introduction, my name is Tim Keenan and I've been intrigued with partisan politics since I was nine years old and went around my neighborhood in Rochester, New York and replaced Nixon door knob campaign cards with those of JFK.

Forty-six years later, this is arguably the most crucial election for the United States of America since 1932 when FDR was elected in a landslide victory as the Republic wobbled dangerously towards anarchy. The Democratic party, more than the beleaguered Republican Party, faces a challenge that very well could determine whether it survives as a viable alternative in the two-party system.

I reside in, and I am registered to vote in, the 13th congressional district of Florida. This is the race to replace the ever-astonishing Republican moon beam, Katherine Harris. Katherine, against the adamant wishes of the Republican Party -- national (W.) and statewide (Jeb) -- is leaving behind Congress in her quest for the U.S. Senate, supported only by her legion of loyal fellow lemmings.

Running to replace the always entertaining public servant in the 13th District is Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. Thier only issues though appear to be trite name-calling and raising bushel baskets of cash to get their message out. But to date, it seems, the only message consists of, well... trite name-calling.

The war in Iraq, the deceit so astutely laid bare in Bob Woodward's staggering and eye-opening new book, "State of Denial" is ignored in the Jennings-Buchanan text book demonstration of ad agency - apolitical consulting agency run political campaigns. With five weeks remaining, I hope to use this blog to put pressure on both candidates to address issues over sleazy tag lines and sound bites.

Ah, but hope is eternal!