Sun Sentinel Broward Edition

The state rejected new results from Broward County because it missed deadline by two minutes. Results reported Saturday will stand.

- By Larry Barszewski, Rafael Olmeda, Lois K. Solomon and Skyler Swisher South Florida Sun Sentinel lbarszewsk­i@ SunSentine­l.com, 954-356-4556 or Twitter @lbarszewsk­i

It looked so good for Broward, confident that the recount would salvage what’s left of the county’s battered reputation for handling elections.

At 2:45 p.m. Thursday, the button was punched. The county’s results were being uploaded to the state ahead of the 3 p.m. deadline.

Then, almost inevitably, trouble struck again.

The upload took 17 minutes, meaning Broward blew its deadline by two minutes, and the state rejected the results.

Even critics of Brenda Snipes, Broward’s underfire supervisor of elections, had to feel a twinge of sympathy as she announced: “I have taken responsibi­lity for every act in this office, good, bad or indifferen­t. I always hold myself accountabl­e.”

It was almost as bleak for Palm Beach County, which didn’t catch flak from the president on down, as Broward did, but which is forever scarred by the painful memory of the 2000 election

There, outdated votecounti­ng equipment broke down — and the elections office missed the deadline. Only able to count one race at a time, they didn’t even finish the one they started, the Senate race.

“It was a heroic effort and we just completed uploading our Saturday results, as was required by law,” said Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County’s supervisor of elections. “If we had three or four more hours, we might have made the time. We got stuck with some mechanical issues.”

But that wasn’t the end of Florida’s miserable day. Hillsborou­gh County, which includes Tampa, also missed the deadline, citing an unexplaine­d drop in the overall number of votes.

In all three counties, results reported Saturday —

the deadline to submit the first unofficial results — will stand.

The narrow margins of those statewide results triggered three machines recounts, which had to be completed by 3 p.m. Thursday. The recounts were in the races for U.S. Senate, governor and agricultur­e commission­er. Thursday’s results determined the governor’s race but led to hand recounts in the other two.

There was one bright spot. Miami-Dade County finished counting on Wednesday morning.

When Palm Beach County elections officials performed a check after their vote-counting machines overheated on Tuesday night, Bucher and her staff noticed the machines were not counting some ballot batches.

“Several boxes per precinct” were lost, she said.

Palm Beach County's failure to complete its machine recount prompted a lawsuit from the Bill Nelson camp seeking a hand recount of all ballots in the county. In the statewide hand recount in the Senate race, Bucher’s office plans to hand recount 5,900 over-votes and undervotes.

Marc Elias, lead recount lawyer for Nelson, remained optimistic Thursday night his client will be able to close the gap, despite the incumbent senator trailing Gov. Rick Scott by roughly 12,600 votes.

Elias said Nelson will be able to gain votes. A federal judge has extended the deadline to Saturday for voters with mail-in ballots to fix signature issues and get their votes counted.

Elias is also pursuing litigation seeking to count mail-in ballots that were in U.S. Postal Service facilities on Election Day but were not delivered. State law requires those ballots to be received by election supervisor­s by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Then there is the actual hand recount, which Elias thinks could result in more votes for Nelson.

"This is what we've been seeking all along," Elias said. "This is where people lay eyes on ballots and make determinat­ions as far as voter intent."

In particular, Elias is focusing on about 25,000 ballots in Broward County that machines indicated did not have a vote in the U.S. Senate race. Elias said he thinks machines are missing votes for Nelson. Another theory is poor ballot design caused voters to skip the race. The Senate contest was below the instructio­ns in the bottom left corner.

Palm Beach County elections officials said they plan to start the state-ordered hand recounts at 11 a.m. Friday. Broward elections officials plan to start at 7 a.m.

Despite getting the recount in late and the vote discrepanc­y in Thursday’s results, Snipes said her office did a great job. It handled about “six million pieces of paper” during the process, paper “that had to be managed and sorted and put in its proper place,” she said.

“I’m pleased that we were able to accomplish what we did accomplish in the period of time that was available,” Snipes said.

Snipes said some of the issues over the past week need to be addressed by the Legislatur­e.

“I would like to see as we go along some changes made in our election laws because I think there’s a lagging behind — some of the laws are lagging behind — some of the procedures that we need to put in place to make this, to make this work,” Snipes said.

 ?? JOE CAVARETTA/SUN SENTINEL ?? Orlando Garcia, left, and Judge Deborah Carpenter Toye examine a duplicate ballot on Thursday.
JOE CAVARETTA/SUN SENTINEL Orlando Garcia, left, and Judge Deborah Carpenter Toye examine a duplicate ballot on Thursday.
 ?? MICHELE EVE SANDBERG/GETTY-AFP ?? Natalie Kato, left, is attorney for Susan Bucher, right, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach County.
MICHELE EVE SANDBERG/GETTY-AFP Natalie Kato, left, is attorney for Susan Bucher, right, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach County.
 ?? WILFREDO LEE/AP ??
WILFREDO LEE/AP

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