Unwilling to wait for the courts to rule on the disputed Sarasota elections, a key member of the U.S. Senate is launching an investigation into the 13th Congressional District race.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she will ask the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct a "top-to-bottom investigation" to determine what caused 18,000 Sarasota County undervotes in the race for Congress.
A GAO investigation could definitely lap the current court case brought by Dem Christine Jennings. Right now, we're still waiting on an appeal of the trial court judge's ruling that Jennings can't get review ES&S's voting machine source code. At first I thought we'd find out this month, but now Jennings' lawyers are saying we won't hear any earlier than March.
But with Feinstein's newly aggressive posture, we might not even have to wait on the appeals process: The Senate can issue subpoenas to crack this stubborn nut open. Then the real fun begins.
P.S. It's also notable that this pressure is coming from the Senate, rather than the House, which has said it prefers to wait until the court case runs its course. My sense, based on tiny hints in the article linked above, is that the Senate has a freer hand here, since (as Feinstein is doing) it can frame the issue as purely one of election integrity, rather than appearing to try to increase its majority by an extra seat.
