(Newest updates are on top).
UPDATE 5:40 p.m. — Various news reports confirm that the partial recount (which was only of early votes in St. Lucie Co., a small percentage of the total vote) did give Murphy a slightly larger lead. But West’s campaign is not giving up, Allen West Camp to Contest ‘Suspect Result’ on ‘Behalf of all Voters in District 18’.
UPDATE 2:41 p.m. — Confusion still, unofficial results may indicate a small increase in Murphy’s lead, but that is not verified yet. Via Palm Beach Post: “Although results have not been certified, final numbers released by the canvassing board today show West with 52,704 votes in St. Lucie County and Murphy with 65,841. These tallies, added the final results from Martin and Palm Beach counties give Murphy the win with 50.16 percent of the vote to West’s 49.51 – a spread of .65 percent.” Via Tweet from West supporter: “West -52672 (previous)- 52704 votes – 32 vote gain for West Murphy – 65567 (previous) votes 65841 – 274 vote gain for Murphy.”
UPDATE 1:47 P.M.: West going to court — Will contest certification — From “a source close to Allen West” provided to Legal Insurrection:
St Lucie missed the deadline for certification, so automatically the previous results are what go to the Secretary of State for final certification.Our attorneys are seeing if it’s possible (today) to get an emergency extension of the deadline.We have until Nov 30 (10 days) to contest the election in Talahassee, and then there would be a hearing scheduled in December.Of course, the Secretary of State may decide to NOT certify the results because of the discrepancies -and we have yet to see the results of the auditor’s report which may recommend a retabulation.Just as background, one precinct has 7 voters registered and yet recorded about 900 votes. That’s a 13,000 percent turnout.Clearly, something is amiss.
UPDATE: West seeks hearing after Murphy camp declares victory when St. Lucie board misses noon deadline.
UPDATE: Announcement expected shortly. Reportedly because Canvassing Board missed state deadline, it will use the non-recount tally. If that happens, expect all hell to break loose. The Canvassing Board stop re-tabulating last night even though the West campaign wanted to continue. Then the Canvassing Board got a late start this morning, and because there was a problem with one of the memory cards, there was no time left to deal with the problem. Here’s what one of our sources says, “”By not completing the count last night, they missed the deadline so the state is using the data from last sunday that had us 249 from automatic recount. Lawyers are trying to get an emergency injunction to have th state extend the deadline.” We’ll find out soon.
UPDATE: Nothing has been certified yet. If there was in fact a malfunction with a voting tabulator, Allen West may still have an avenue to ensure that the unofficial results from last week are not certified.
From NBCMiami.com: [Emphasis mine]
A noon Sunday deadline has passed to report new returns in the race between Democrat Patrick Murphy and Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West.
Officials in St. Lucie County, where a recount was being conducted, made no announcement of their findings.
Under state law, unless they have received an emergency exemption from the state, unofficial results filed last week will be certified.
Those results showed Murphy the winner in the race by about 1,900 votes.
———-
UPDATE: Confusion in St. Lucie County as the 12:00pm deadline to certify results has come and gone. The twitter account I’ve been following for updates, @AllenWest4Congr (not his campaign account, an account run by supporters), just tweeted out the following three tweets:
————
The results of the recount in St. Lucie County are due in at any minute.
Recall that west was down by .58% at last count. If he can decrease that margin to within .5%, then a state mandated full recount of Florida’s 18th Congressional District will be required by law.
Updates to come shortly.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
