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The Jennings camp has been excited for weeks following the announcement that a bi-partisan task force would look into the infamous District 13 race. Well, they’re gonna have to keep waiting.

Republican Vernon Ehlers (yes, his name is Vern) is not going to appoint a republican “until he gets more ‘clarity’ on why the task force was formed.” Of course, until he does that, the task force can’t start looking into its task. And every day Buchanan is in office, the chances of a revote diminish.

Here’s why the task force was formed, Vern Jr.: 18,000 people got screwed. Dent ignored warnings that the machines were going to fail. There is no paper record of what happened, and this district deserves an answer.

Or, at the very least, it deserves the pretense that D.C. gives a crap.

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According to this, Vern Buchanan wants to raise the penalty for kidnapping. Wait, my mistake. Buchanan wants to raise the penalty for kindapping — only if the kidnapper is an illegal immigrant. If you’re here legally, the sentence stays at 20 years. If you’re not, Vern wants you to do 30.
The impetus for all this is Clay Moore, an incredible kid with an incredible story. Should we do everything we can to save children from going through what he did? Of course. But that does not mean it’s time for xenophobia — or for creating laws that punish people differently based on their heritage. Kidnapping is wrong. And being an illegal immigrant is illegal. But kidnapping isn’t extra wrong becuase an illegal immigrant commits it.
Buchanan says it’s a trend thing:

Such a law would send a message to illegal immigrants that kidnapping, now prevalent in Latin America, is unacceptable here, Buchanan said.

“We cannot let it get started in America,” he said. “I want to cut it off now.”

Maybe he’s just worried about being too liberal.

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According to this story by Melinda Henneberger on Huffington Post, the manufacturer of the electronic voting machines used in the infamous District 13 race told Dent and others in Florida before the election that there may be a malfunction:

WASHINGTON – Last August, Election Systems & Software sent Florida election officials a letter informing them of a glitch in their electronic voting equipment — a problem that should be fixed before Election Day in November “to avoid any potential issues at the polls.”

Instead, the problem was ignored, said Sam Hirsch, a lawyer for Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings, who has petitioned the court and the Congress for a new election in Katherine Harris’s old district in Sarasota.

Kathy Dent, Sarasota Supervisor of Elections, confirmed in a phone interview today that the manufacturer’s recommendation was disregarded, and no action taken: “No one in the State of Florida updated” the equipment after receiving the letter, she said, “and that’s because it was too close to the election. It was a state decision that it was too late to make changes.”

Dent says the glitch had no bearing on those pesky 18,000 undervotes. Hirsch disagrees. He told Henneberger that the problem “matches the reports we got from voters.”

I spoke to Jennings a few weeks back — she’s still fighting and is convinced she’ll get a recount. If this story keeps refusing to die, she might just be right.

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