Um, Hoss: Tell that to Jennings.

Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country.

More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.

That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate — a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.

If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to a Herald-Tribune review. Even if the undervote had been 8 percent — more than three times what it was in Manatee — Jennings would have won by one vote.

While some have speculated that people simply chose not to vote in the District 13 race, many voters say the unusual undervote was caused by badly designed touch-screen ballots, which they say hid the race or made it hard to verify if they had cast their vote.

More than 120 Sarasota County voters contacted the Herald-Tribune to report such problems, almost all regarding the Jennings-Buchanan race.

I suppose I can be a little wild eyed on the issue, but gosh, it’s not like there was a shortage of reasons to be.

I’ll spell it out for those detractors who think I’m just hooked on the foil:

E-voting fraud is one part of a complex list of ways in which Republicans deny the electorate its choices. Used together with time-honored methods like voter intimidation, too few machines in heavily Democratic precincts, complicated/illegal voter eligibility requirements, and nonfunctional equipment, saying that Republicans are “stealing” elections is both correct and appropriate. No one here has ever argued that the Republicans have relied solely on direct electronic theft, only that it’s an issue which deserves our attention.

Frankly, making us all out to be capital-letter post title crazies just complicates that. Yes, we won a lot of seats. But without a paper trail, you can’t tell me how many we should’ve won, but didn’t, and I’m not just going to “trust Republicans” on this, or any other issue. Sorry, that would just be stupid at this point.