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January 7, 2009 |
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| September 03, 2008 |
By: Bud Newman |
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alm Beach County and state officials scrambled late Wednesday to see if they have the legal authority to order an unprecedented second recount in the razor thin contest between incumbent circuit judge Richard Wennet and his challenger, attorney William Abramson.
Florida’s Secretary of State flew to West Palm Beach to recommend to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board that there be a full machine recount.
Major complications faced the board before it could settle the election outcome.
One is uncertainty over how many people actually voted in the Aug. 26 primary election. Was it 102,523 as indicated in the original vote tally from election night? Or was it 99,045, which is the number that emerged in machine and manual recounts last weekend?
Another problem centered on whether the state or the county had the legal authority to proceed with a second recount in the same election.
After meeting with Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who serves as Florida’s chief elections officer, the board was poised to reconvene at midnight to learn the outcome of a review by technicians who sought to learn how many people voted in the election.
The board made no official decision late Wednesday early this evening on whether to proceed with another recount. County election officials across Florida had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to turn in final election results to the state.
Browning said there is a 5 p.m. appointment Friday with Gov. Charlie Crist in Tallahassee to certify the election result. He urged the county to complete any possible recount before then.
Boca Raton attorney Peter Sosin of Shiner & Sosin, who represents Abramson, said he and his client were pleased extra time is being devoted to determine the judicial race’s outcome.
“We’re very happy that the governor did not certify the [election] results that were sent up yesterday’” by the county canvassing board, he said.
Palm Beach County Judge Barry Cohen, the canvassing board chairman, said, “it is not yet clear that the board has the proper legal authority to order a recount.
“I’m not an automatic vote for a recount,” Cohen said, adding that he needs to seek legal advice before he decides how to proceed.
Browning was consulting with his own attorneys to determine whether there was legal authority to order another full recount.
West Palm Beach attorney Gerald Richman, who represents Wennet, said such a move would be “uncharted territory.”
Richman called a second recount “a new process that has never been done before” in any Florida election.
Asked by Richman what would happen if a Palm Beach County recount is not completed by Friday, Browning replied, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The canvassing board conducted a full recount over the weekend, which determined that Wennet had won his race by 60 votes.
After the votes were initially tabulated last week, Abramson was ahead by 17 votes going into the recount.
Not every voter who went to the polls cast ballots in the Wennet-Abramson race.
Local officials said at a special canvassing board meeting this afternoon that there were 3,478 more ballots counted on election day than in the manual and machine counts over the weekend.
“We believe that we need to reconstruct the election in such a manner that we determine the benchmark,” Browning told the canvassing board. “I’m hopeful that it’s 102,” he said, referring to the number 102,000.
Asked if it turned out that a review of all ballots cast showed that only 99,045 people voted, Browning said, “You’ve got a problem -- truly.”
Browning said he believes that the discrepancy between the vote totals after election night and after the recount were due to ballots being left behind and not counted during the weekend machine recount.
“I am confident it is not a voting systems issue,” Browning said. “We need to make the determination that we have all the ballots in hand.”
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