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Florida is once again garnering national attention for voting irregularities. The District 13 Congressional race wound up in a Tallahassee court room today where Circuit Judge William Gary has refused to speed up the discovery process in legal proceedings over who won the race. As Mike Vasilinda reports, the judge also turned down, at least temporarily, candidate Christine Jennings request to do an independent test on suspect voting machines.

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Christine Jennings sat behind her lawyers, hoping the legal process will find enough votes to make her the winner in a Sarasota Congressional seat where she trails by 369 votes. Kendall Coffey, her attorney is calling it a test case for the nation. And he asked for the computer source code and an independent analysis of electronic voting machines to prove they didn’t count all of the votes.

“This is a case where the will of the voters of district 13 was defeated by machine error”.

More than 18 thousand votes weren’t cast or read by the machines in the congressional race. Attorneys for the Secretary of State and the Sarasota Elections Supervisor argued allowing independent tests was a mistake. Pete Antonacci called for the upmost caution, saying

“Everything that is done with these machines from this moment forward, judge, should be as fair open transparent and objective as possible.”

The judge refused to allow independent testing of the machines. Or to speed the case up.

Outside, Jennings attorney Coffey was putting the best face possible on the ruling.

“Frankly, we wanted more. We wanted this case to move very very quickly. It is our view that that still serves the interests of justice. Fortunately, nothing we were asking for was rejected.

As for Jennings….she was saying little.

“ I just want to make sure that every vote counts.”

The winner is supposed to take office January 3rd.

Jennings declined to comment when asked if she would seek a political solution, by asking Democrats in Congress to seat her instead of Buchanan if the legal process goes against her.