Broward Recount of 714,000 ballots begins

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections voting machine recalculation was supposed to begin at 7am Sunday morning, followed immediately by the official recount.

That didn’t happen.

The first recalculation of the machines ended with the Broward Elections Canvassing Board calling for a re-re-calculation of the machines after a glitch in one of the devices was detected.

According to supervisor of elections Attorney Eugene Pettis, only the first page containing individual races, including senate, gubernatorial, congressional, and commissioner of agriculture, were being recounted.

The morning proceedings began with both political parties picking a representative with “expertise” in voting machines to serve as observer during the recalculation process.

Republicans had their guy already identified, Democrats didn’t. Democratic Party Attorney Mitchell Berger sprung up and stated that he would serve as the observer because he was an “expert” on voting machines.

Republican Party of Florida Attorney Ed Pozzuoli jokingly quipped at Berger, stating,” Mitch, do you even know what you are looking at,” and kept referring to him as an “expert.”

We asked Berger about his expertise and he simply stated that he was an attorney. During the canvassing proceedings, Broward County Democratic Party Chairwoman designated Berger as their representative.

Several hours and recesses (4) later, the official recount process began, but not before some more drama.

Both political parties were granted observers to sit in the actual room where votes are being counted. Even though a reasonable number of names was asked of them, Democrats sent the canvassing board an email with 41 names, but attached a document with hundreds more.

The canvassing board quickly addressed the email, saying that only the names in the actual email, not the attachment, would be place on the official observer list.

More Drama.

In a move to expedite the process, two more ballot counting machines were requested and are en route to Broward County from the Orlando area. Rick Scott Attorney Jessica Kopas objected to the move, saying that those machines needed to be re-calibrated simultaneously with the existing ten machines upon their arrival.

According to director of the recount process,  only Page 1 of the 5-page ballot will be counted, and will take at least 30-35 hrs. to sort before the 714,000 ballots begin to be recounted.

The Broward SOE has until November 16 to receive all overseas ballots, so a final count will not be known until Friday, at the earliest.

More on the recount here.