According to this article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, “The voting machine company now at the center of the disputed 13th Congressional District election made it clear Friday that it will fight the disclosure of the computer codes that run its touch-screen machines.”
The article also reports that the voting machine company has retained Michael Herron as an expert, apparently using his co-authored study to bolster the case for poor ballot design, thereby showing “there is ‘no reasonable necessity’ requiring the company to disclose its computer codes.”
This is quite troubling. A full investigation is necessary to understand what went wrong in the FL-13 and to make sure it does not happen again. With undervote rates this high, it is in the public interest to know whether these machines could be capable of causing such a problem. The judge should of course craft an order to avoid unnecessary disclosure of trade secrets, but some experts must be allowed to examine the code. Elections are a public process and voting companies cannot expect things to remain completely proprietary in the face of these kinds of issues.
Moreover, even if one does not buy my argument that the House should order a new election in FL-13, the House should absolutely conduct its own investigation of what happened in this race, including having experts examine every technical aspect of the voting process.