CopyCited 15 times | Published | Supreme Court of Florida | 35 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 101, 2010 Fla. LEXIS 218, 2010 WL 455276
...(2) Any electronic voting machine shall allow the voter to correct his or her ballot by rejecting overvoted ballots at the time of voting, when voting in person at the polling place. 6.2B. Mandatory Audits. In addition to Voting System Audits allowed in F.S. 101.591, the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections shall provide for mandatory, independent, random audits of the voting system in Sarasota County....
...These audits must be "publicly observable hand counts of the voter verified paper ballots in comparison to the machine counts." Under the 2006 Election Code, the Legislature had the authority to determine whether to order an independent audit of a county's voting system. § 101.591(1), Fla....
...The statute requires the audit to take place immediately following the certification of each election, sets forth the procedures to be used in the audit, establishes a timeline for completion of the audit, and specifies the information to be included in the report that must be submitted to the Department of State. See § 101.591, Fla. Stat. (2008). Further, the Legislature gave the Department of State authority to adopt rules relating to this audit procedure. See § 101.5911, Fla....
CopyCited 8 times | Published | Florida 2nd District Court of Appeal | 2007 WL 3170111
...(2) Any electronic voting machine shall allow the voter to correct his or her ballot by rejecting overvoted ballots at the time of voting, when voting in person at the polling place. 6.2B. Mandatory Audits. In addition to Voting System Audits allowed in F.S. 101.591, the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections shall provide for mandatory, independent, random audits of the voting system in Sarasota County....
...of votes. §
101.5614(2). This chapter also provides for testing of voting equipment before the election to ensure its accurate functioning (§
101.5612), as well as examination of the voting equipment during voting (§
101.5613) and postelection (§§
101.591, .595)....
...ion, a "comprehensive manual audit of the voter verified paper ballots in all precincts" must be completed within five days of the election. As the Board has pointed out, the SAFE amendment's mandatory audit requirement conflicts with the version of section 101.591(1) of the Election Code that was in effect in 2006....
...y provide for an independent audit of the voting system in any county. Within 30 days after completing the audit, the person conducting the audit shall furnish a copy of the audit to the supervisor of elections and the board of county commissioners. § 101.591(1), Fla. Stat. (2006). The 2006 Election Code clearly left it to the legislature to decide whether to order an independent audit of a county's voting system. Therefore, the SAFE amendment's mandatory audit requirement conflicted with the prior section 101.591(1) by usurping the legislature's authority and dictating that voting system audits must be conducted in Sarasota County in every election. Further, in May 2007, the legislature revised section 101.591 to dictate exactly when and how to conduct any independent audits. § 101.591(1)-(5), Fla. Stat. (2007). [10] Section 101.591, entitled "Voting system audit," now requires that the county canvassing board conduct a manual audit of the voting systems used in randomly selected precincts....
...lection. The audit shall consist of a manual tally of the votes cast in one randomly selected race. The tally sheet shall include at least 1%, but no more than 2%, of the precincts chosen at random by the county canvassing board. This new version of section 101.591 of the Election Code also grants the Department of State *651 authority to adopt rules to implement the audit requirements....
...Pete Beach,
940 So.2d 1144, 1150 (Fla. 2d DCA 2006) (noting that when interpreting a statute, the "`express mention of one thing is the exclusion of another'" (quoting Inman v. State,
916 So.2d 59, 61 (Fla. 2d DCA 2005))). Therefore, audits other than those outlined by section
101.591 conflict with the Election Code and are not permissible....
...ed to assure that the count is accurate for that race alone. Accordingly, I conclude that the amendment's audit provision is a true audit requirement, not a recount provision. Audit provisions have not been specifically preempted by the legislature. Section 101.591(1) provides that "[t]he Legislature, upon specific appropriation and directive, may provide for an independent audit of the voting system in any county." However, since the legislature has chosen not to provide for audits and has not...
...The legislature has also expressly granted the Department of State authority to enact rules regulating the conduct of such audits. See ch.2007-30, § 9, at 8, Laws of Fla. (2007) ("Effective upon this act becoming a law, the Department of State shall adopt rules to implement the provisions of s. 101.591, Florida Statutes, as amended by section 8 which prescribe detailed audit procedures for each voting system, which shall be uniform to the extent practicable, along with the standard form for audit reports.")....
