Supreme Court rejects appeal of FL voting machines

The U.S. Supreme Court will not consider whether Florida's touch-screen voting machines need to have a paper trail in case of a recount, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler appealled a lower-court ruling that the state's touch-screen voting machines don't need to leave a paper ballot trail. The Democrat from Boca Raton had sued in 2004, alleging the state was disenfranchising voters because some counties use machines that don't allow for a recount based on paper ballots, while other counties have machines that do.

The decision doesn't affect the controversy affecting Christine Jennings run for the House in Florida. Jennings lost a close race in which 18,000 cast ballots failed to cast a vote for the House race. She just appealed a lower court ruling against her to the First District Court of Appeals. Jennings' campaign says:

We are not giving up because the right to vote in fair elections, and to have that vote accurately recorded and counted, is sacrosanct in this country. Some seem to have tragically forgotten that–including some who would seek to serve as the People's representative. But the purpose of a Representative is to speak for the People when their voices are silenced. Hundreds of Sarasotans have filed sworn affadavits attesting to the machine malfunctions they themselves witnessed and they are being silenced. When over 18,000 voices were silenced in Novemeber, it was Christine who raised her voice to protect and defend theirs. If that doesn't epitomize the ideals of our representative democracy, I don't know what does.