The suit seeks to secure all the ballots from the race in a "secure facility" and review them by hand. The motion is being challenged by attorneys for rival Patrick Murphy, representative-elect for the 18th congressional district.
The confusing tale of Vince Gaskin v. Linda Harden and Murphy v West continues. By the end of the evening, after a day's counting, there was once again, a discrepancy with the numbers in the race.
One new ballot was found. One.
Still the numbers don't jibe.
Can this election as it was handled in St. Lucie get any more strange? Yes.
It seems that in Polling Precinct 89, Tradition Town Hall, Port St. Lucie, a scanning machine and the memory card inside it were left in a bin well into the morning hours rather than brought back to the Supervisor's office. This is a fact agreed upon by the supervisor of elections, if sheepishly admitted to.
Each memory card is more than capable of holding 5,000 ballots. There it sat, and while it was locked in a big blue bin, (said Ms. Walker) and collected soon enough with a phone call waking up the worker, and some late night scurrying of staff, it still is big goof up, one of many.
So there was a lapse in chain of custody. There sat the card, its ballots therein (none uploaded), well past close of voting and counting essentially done for the day going into Wednesday Nov. 8.
"You train 65 people how to do their job and sometimes you get one that just doesn't" Ms. Walker said.
It should be noted that Walker is in a contested race in all this as well.
The mess and confusion then allows the state to come in with an "audit" to the system, which will likely proceed Thursday Nov. 15.
The audit and all the confusion is the perfect opportunity for malfeasance, either way. If you don't trust the chief of elections systems and certifications to be non-partisan; if you don't trust him not to sway the vote in the direction that would allow Allen West to nudge open the door to opportunity, then this is the nightmare scenario.
The quote of the afternoon into evening session comes from Sean C. Dominick, volunteer legal aid to congressman-elect Patrick Murphy, to Rick Scott Watch.
We were discussing the election itself as it was handled in Florida. Mr. Dominick was speaking for himself when he dropped this gem.
"The fact that we have people whose goal it is to keep people from voting, it's ridiculous,. There have been enough people disenfranchised from the vote for far too long. It's time to start enfranchising people."
Dominick said the congressman-elect considers the post his. He is looking forward to taking on the issues facing the middle class.
As far as elections go, the congressman would consider discussion about a federal elections commission staffed with non partisan employees to bring an element of trust and non-partisanship into elections but this is not his first mission.
Here are the raw filing documents of Allen West for congress versus the St. Lucie County SOE and the canvassing board.
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