There have been lots of rumors swirling that Allen West was ahead by a couple hundred votes, or that there was substantial “overvoting” which affected the race. None of those rumors appear to be correct.
The Shark Tank blog in Florida has the latest information:
There’s a lot of misinformation circulating out there about the effort to tally up the votes in Congressman Allen West’s race, but here’s the bottom line- the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections has finished its canvassing, having counted all of the absentee and provisional ballots this past Friday. The conclusion- West is down by about 2400 votes cumulatively across the congressional district. The Martin County Supervisor of Elections has also accounted for all of their ballots, and there appears that there is no issue there.The last possibility for West’s chances lies with the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections, who is dragging their feet in releasing the Voter sign-in rolls. West’s campaign is requesting these rolls in order to compare them with the actual votes cast. So far, the SOE is saying that they are not all tallied and is currently working on accounting for all of the sign-in rolls…..That’s it. Anything else you hear out there about this race is bogus or simply speculation. Reports that there is over-voting in St. Lucie county is speculative. The candidates and amendments took up two voter cards, so some voters just voted on one card and not the other, some voted on both and turned them in, which accounts for the fact that there were more voter cards turned in than actual registered voters. West’s campaign does believe that there could be at least 700 extra cards submitted, that could translate into 350 extra votes.
Read the rest at The Shark Tank.
Update: The West campaign has released a statement:
“With all provisional and absentee votes counted in the 18th District, Congressman West currently trails by roughly 2,400 votes, a margin outside of the threshold for an automatic recount. The race remains undecided because there are issues that still need to be resolved in St. Lucie County. Late on Election Night, Congressman West led by 1,700 votes. Following the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections’ decision to recount thousands of early ballots after a technical glitch, the margin shifted by 4,000. In order to ensure that votes were not doubled counted, we have requested that the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections make public the poll check-in books to ensure the numbers of ballots cast matches the numbers of voters checked-in at the polls. Once that information is provided we believe the outcome of the election will be clear. It is troubling that days later that information is still not available. Our sole focus is ensuring all ballots were counted fairly and accurately.”
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