Florida races to recount votes

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida counties began the laborious and time-sensitive recount of votes cast last week to resolve the state’s three close statewide races.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner was aware of recount problems in Broward County on Sunday, but said through a spokeswoman that they were resolved.

On Saturday, the razor-thin margins in the races of U.S. Senate, agriculture commissioner and the governor’s race prompted Detzner to order mandatory machine recounts in all three statewide races after all counties submitted their unofficial results by noon.

The state’s 67 elections departments have just five days to recount more than 8.2 million combined ballots cast over an entire month leading up to Tuesday’s midterms.

Broward County was supposed to start its recount at 7 a.m. Sunday, cranking out recounts in 24-hour shifts from its Lauderhill facility. But glitches with the machines delayed the start by four hours.

The county also has to recount four local elections, and will run more than 700,000 ballots through its machines.

To make the Thursday deadline, the county has to count about 6,874 ballots an hour, so that delay puts Broward about 25,000 ballots behind that pace.

Gov. Rick Scott’s attorney, Tim Cerio, said he didn’t know what caused Broward County’s delay Sunday morning, but that two more machines were being sent to the office from Orlando.

In Miami-Dade, the state’s most populated county, the recount began early Saturday evening, as workers began to load paper ballots into scanning machines for a tabulation that will likely take days.

Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, home to Tampa and St. Petersburg, began their recounts at 9 a.m. Sunday.