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| September 03, 2008 |
By: Bud Newman and Jordana Mishory |
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eekend recounts produced a judicial challenger who is thinking about suing in West Palm Beach and a loss for a Broward Circuit Court incumbent.
After a recount, West Palm Beach traffic attorney William Abramson is alleging ballots disappeared after veteran Palm Beach Circuit Judge Richard Wennet finished with a 60-vote victory in their seesaw election.
Abramson attorney David Shiner of Shiner & Sosin in Boca Raton questions the latest results because 90,727 votes were counted on election night, but only 87,804 votes were tabulated in the recount.
Abramson wants to know what happened to the other 2,923 ballots that were not around after machine and manual recounts were done, Shiner said Tuesday.
“The recount as far as we’re concerned is not complete, and those numbers cannot be sent to Tallahassee” to certify Wennet the winner, Shiner said.
West Palm Beach attorney Gerald Richman of Richman Greer, who represents Wennet, said the Abramson people are “dead wrong,” and “there are no missing votes.”
Richman said 90,733 votes were counted the first time around. Another 11,790 ballots had no choice or two choices in the judicial race for a total of 102,523 ballots.
In the recount, he said more sensitive counting machines showed 42,973 votes for Wennet and 42,912 for Abramson plus 16,638 undervotes and overvotes for the same total.
“The machines in the field are wrong,” Richman said. “They ended up overcounting for both candidates.” He said Wennet is “clearly the winner, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t stand up in court.”
The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, which conducted the weekend recount, had a deadline of 5 p.m. Tuesday to certify a winner.
A state court suit would name the Canvassing Board as the defendant, Shiner said.
A federal suit alleging voter disenfranchisement also is being considered, he said.
Wennet, a judge for 23 years, finished ahead by 18 votes early Wednesday when election workers headed home, but Abramson went into the recount up by 17 votes. After machine and manual recounts, Wennet regained the lead.
Wennet and Abramson have a rivalry going back years through ethics complaints. One complaint against Wennet is still pending, and Abramson was publicly disciplined on a Wennet filing.
In Fort Lauderdale, attorney Mardi Anne Levey bumped Broward Circuit Judge Pedro Dijols off the November ballot by 72 votes after two weekend recounts.
Levey will face Assistant Public Defender Bernie Bober in a runoff on the November general election ballot.
Dijols has been trailing since election night. He was 111 votes behind Levey out of the 95,470 cast in the three-way race last week. The tight margin triggered an automatic recount Friday.
A manual recount of undervotes and overvotes is required if the machine recount ends with a margin of one-fourth of 1 percent or less, as it did in this contest.
Bober won nearly 38 percent of the vote in the primary.
Levey said she was impressed with how professionally and quickly the election staff responded to the close election.
“I commend the supervisor of elections for doing an excellent job,” she said Tuesday in an interview. “I look forward to continuing my campaign and meeting more people in Broward County.”
Dijols did not return a call for comment by deadline. His attorney, Bill Scherer at Conrad Scherer in Fort Lauderdale, said “stay tuned” for potential further action without further explanation.
Dijols is one of three Broward incumbents defeated in last week’s primary election. All three were Hispanic judges appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush.
Bud Newman can be reached at (561) 820-2075.
Jordana Mishory can be reached at jordana.mishory@incisivemedia.com or at (954) 468-2616. |
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