Access to all ballots and registration information has been granted to True the Vote for citizen-led audit of the 2012 contest for Florida's 18^th Congressional   District

True the Vote (TTV), the nation's leading voters' rights organization, announced its settlement with the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections regarding records inspection rights under federal law and the Florida Constitution. The agreement provides True the Vote access to all ballots, registrations, and other election related data necessary to conduct an audit of a federal election in Florida's 18th   congressional district. The audit is unprecedented in that it will be led not by government entities or political parties, but by concerned citizens.

True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said "We must stop this scandalous cycle of ignoring failures in our   electoral process when the campaigns and cameras go home.  Understanding how   failures in administration can effect elections, as we saw in St. Lucie County, will help prevent them from occurring in the future. We cannot allow slipshod standards to become pandemic across our country's election processes   - citizens can and will stand up in defense of election integrity. This settlement   grants TTV all of the records we originally requested, without any adverse impacts to St. Lucie County taxpayers. The real work toward understanding exactly what happened before, during and after the 2012 18th Congressional District race can finally begin."

A key component to the settlement agreement was to permit access to information dating back to   January of 2009. Such information will help evaluate efforts to maintain voter rolls, both before and after federal election cycles. TTV chose to perform a comprehensive audit of the 2012 election and subsequent recount between incumbent Allen West and Patrick Murphy after reports of errors and inaccurate tabulations were admitted to.

"Since 2009 to present, Washington has made clear that it doesn't have any interest in seeing that voter rolls are maintained - we must fully study how that can affect a close congressional race," TTV attorney J. Christian Adams said.  "This case is unique because it was directly impacted by the Holder Justice Department's attempt to block the State of Florida's efforts to remove ineligible persons from the voter rolls ahead of the 2012 General Election. This settlement will lead my client to answers, finally."

The agreement between True the Vote and St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker allows for sharing of records that pertain directly to the 2012 contest, in addition to election administration files dating back to January 2009.  An abbreviated list of records includes:

• 2012 voter credit documents;  
• completed voter registration forms;
• copies of all regular and provisional ballots cast (including provisional notices);  
• documents pertaining to federal list maintenance requirements since 2009 (including felon and non-citizen records);
• all documentation for those trained as poll and tabulation workers for the 2012 contest.

The settlement came as a result of a lawsuit after requests to inspect election records were not   immediately addressed.

 Source: True the Vote Press info@truethevote.org