TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A judge ruled Friday that the Democrat who narrowly lost the race to succeed Rep. Katherine Harris cannot examine the programming code of the electronic voting machines used in the disputed election.
Circuit Judge William Gary ruled that Christine Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture" and did not warrant disclosing the trade secrets of the voting machine company, Election Systems & Software.
The Jennings campaign said it will appeal.
"It's shocking that there is more concern for protecting a company's profits rather than protecting our right to vote," Jennings said in a news release.
Ken Fields, a company spokesman, said the ruling reaffirmed the company's assertion that the machines worked fine and there wasn't any reason to think the tests that showed it worked were wrong.
State officials have declared Republican Vern Buchanan the winner by 369 votes in the Sarasota-area congressional district. But 18,000 electronic ballots showed no votes cast in the House race, and Jennings contends the machines lost the votes.
The state found no evidence of malfunctions.