{"id":9738,"date":"2012-11-16T15:55:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T23:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=9738"},"modified":"2012-11-19T13:32:37","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T21:32:37","slug":"allen-wests-motion-for-broader-partial-re-tally-of-ballots-in-fl-18-race-denied-by-florida-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9738","title":{"rendered":"Florida Court Denies Allen West’s Motion for Broader Partial Re-Tally of Ballots in FL-18 Race"},"content":{"rendered":"[Now UPDATED at bottom of story.<\/em>]\n

A Circuit Court Judge in St. Lucie County today denied Florida’s Republican Rep. Allen West’s motion to order a re-tally of all Early Voting ballots in the county, after a partial re-tally of Early Votes last Sunday resulted in the disappearance of some 800 votes<\/a> in the FL-18 U.S. House race between West and Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy.<\/p>\n

It the second denial<\/a> for West, a “Tea Party” favorite, in a Florida court room, where he had previously filed a motion to impound paper ballots and voting systems before all ballots had even yet been run through them.<\/p>\n

Today, according to the Palm Beach Post<\/i><\/a>, “Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn said he did not have the authority to issue an injunction ordering the recount.”<\/p>\n

“In denying West’s motion,” the paper said, “Vaughn noted the [St. Lucie County] canvassing board is considering the issue at a meeting this afternoon. The judge also said that West has other legal remedies – specifically mentioning a statute that allows a candidate to contest an election within 10 days of the final certification of results. That certification is scheduled for Tuesday.”<\/p>\n

Murphy’s attorney argued in response that there was “no basis for a full recount of early votes and if the canvassing board orders a full recount of them, the Murphy campaign will go to court to try to block it.”<\/p>\n

“If the canvassing board were to decide that they want to do that without any evidentiary basis to do so, we’ll be back before your honor with a motion for injunctive relief against them doing it because under the law the statute that we cited for your honor they have absolutely no right to do it,” the Post<\/i> quotes Murphy attorney Gerald Richman as arguing in court today.<\/p>\n

No “evidentiary basis”? Really? A partial selection of ballots — just the last three days of eight days of Early Voting — are re-tallied by the same machines that tallied them originally, but give a completely different result the second time they are tallied and that isn’t<\/i> “evidentiary basis” for re-tallying all<\/i> of the votes? If that isn’t a basis for a full public hand-count<\/i> of all ballots, I’m not sure what is. Unfortunately, without a court order, thanks to the state’s Republican legislature following the 2000 Presidential Election debacle in that state, it’s illegal to hand-count paper ballots once they’ve been tallied by an electronic machine.<\/p>\n[Update: See bottom of story for update on what happened at the canvassing board on Friday, and much more!<\/em>]\n

I was on Thom Hartmann’s TV show, The Big Picture<\/i><\/a>, last night to discuss the FL-18 U.S. House mess where West currently trails Murphy by a very slim margin, according to oft-failed, easily-manipulated, paper ballot optical-scan computers made by three different private companies in the three different counties that make up Florida’s newly redistricted 18th Congressional District.<\/p>\n

As we’ve covered in detail here at The BRAD BLOG<\/a>, a margin of some 2,400 votes out of some 330,000 votes tallied<\/a> as of last Friday was dwindled down to just under 2,000 votes as of last Sunday when St. Lucie County — one of the three, along with Martin and Palm Beach Counties, that make up FL-18 — carried out a partial<\/i> re-tally of Early Voting ballots due, they say, to an unexplained “issue” on the Diebold optical-scan systems used to tally those ballots in the county.<\/p>\n

In the bargain, some 800 votes seem to have disappeared according to the new Diebold tally<\/a>. Both candidates lost votes in that partial re-tally — where they ran the same ballots through the same machines, which counted them differently this time than they did previously — but West ended up gaining some 500 votes on Murphy in the bargain.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, at this time, West is still some 250 votes shy of a mandated state “recount” which is triggered when the margin is .5% or less. Currently, the margin is just eight one-hundredths of a percentage point shy of that mark, at .58%, with West having filed his court for an expanded re-tally of all Early Voting ballots in St. Lucie<\/a> earlier this week. While his court motion had called for a full re-tally of all Early Votes in St. Lucie, the motion failed to request a re-tally of either Election Day votes, absentee ballots or any<\/i> of the ballots in FL-18’s other two counties, for unexplained reasons (the West campaign has not replied to our queries on that) as we also discussed on Hartmann’s show…<\/p>\n