MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Election officials in Manatee County were forced to start the recount process over on Monday after they discovered an erroneous setting on one of the voting machines tabulating votes.
- Error found by officials around 2 p.m.
- Recount started over shortly after
- More Manatee County stories
According to Michael Bennett, Supervisor of Elections in Manatee County, one of the machines had a button pushed incorrectly.
"When we programmed it to kick out the overvotes and the undervotes and the blank ballots, we kicked out the overvotes and we kicked out the blanks but we didn't kick out the undervotes," Bennett explained. "And all of a sudden we're looking saying, 'these numbers aren't right.'"
The error was caught right around 2 p.m. and the machine recount restarted shortly after.
In all, Bennett says, they lost roughly 4 hours of work. About 43,000 ballots had made it through the machine when officials noticed the issue.
As in other counties, the procedure is being watched closely by people on both sides of the aisle.
"We just wanted to make sure that all the machines were set back to zero and that they don't start at 300 or 500, especially for the other side," said observer Ken Piper.
"We just want to make sure every vote here in Manatee County is paid attention to, is looked at, is counted," said Sheryl Wilson.
Election officials stayed late Monday night to make up for the lost time.
Initially, Manatee County planned to have the unofficial ballot tally completed by Wednesday. They plan to stick to the same timeline, despite the delay, Bennet said.
The deadline statewide is Thursday at 3 p.m.
"We're making excellent speed and we actually believe that we will be done on Wednesday," Bennett said. "We've got until Thursday at 3 p.m. so we don't feel under any pressure at all."
Spectrum Bay News 9 reporter Laurie Davison contributed to this report.