PALM BEACH COUNTY (CBS4) – Palm Beach County elections officials are feeling the heat once again of another extremely close election. This time, it’s the Florida governor’s race between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Alex Sink. The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board is back at work Wednesday counting absentee and provisional ballots, according to Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor. And even though Alex Sink has conceded, officials say this process is extremely important.
At issue here are as many as 10,000 absentee ballots and a few thousand provisional ballots that have to be checked by hand here in a Democratic-rich county that could have had the potential to make a difference in the governor’s race.
With all 789 precincts reporting, Alex Sink won Palm Beach County with 216,438 votes. Rick Scott received 146,786 votes. Palm Beach County has 822,000 registered voters.
So much is at stake, according to Bucher. “We’ve got to get it right. We are working hard as you see.”
It’s a slow process as three members of the Palm Beach County canvassing board check the ballots by hand. Those canvassing board members are County Judge Peter Marcus, Palm Beach Commissioner Karen Marcus and Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher.
“Right now we’re looking at the absentee ballots that have not been counted, the ones with white marks or white out on them, ones with eraser marks on them, and check marks that are off. We need to determine voter intent,” explained Bucher.
Then the absentee ballots that they are checking have to be duplicated and checked again.
“Those duplications will come back and confirm those absentee ballots.”
And a few thousand provisional ballots, or ones with possible errors in them, will have to be checked as well.
Palm Beach County became notorious for its butterfly ballot and impacting the 2000 presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore.
The elections supervisor attributes delays this time to the county’s size and unlike many counties; Palm Beach does not use modems to send precinct numbers to headquarters.
“We don’t use modems because we are too vast. We have 463 locations that we are dealing with and we can’t accommodate that,” explained Bucher.
A campaign spokesman for Rick Scott had criticized the delays in Palm Beach County. Bucher hopes to finish counting by Wednesday but admits it may take until Thursday.
