Last Updated: 9:47 p.m.
Though it was still ongoing as this article published at almost 10 p.m., the recount in a Palm Coast City Council race and a County Commission race was to be suspended late Friday night and resumed at 9 a.m. Saturday, as the recount took significantly longer than expected and a hiccup further delayed it.
The machine recount of every ballot started after 2 p.m. Approaching 7 p.m., it was only 60 percent done. Nearing 9 p.m., the Canvassing Board agreed to adjourn once the machine recount was completed tonight (sometime between 10 and 11 p.m.), and reconvene at 9 a.m. Saturday to conduct the manual recount of overvotes and undervotes.
That will amount to 891 undervotes and five overvotes in the race between Pam Richardson and Ed Danko for County Commission, which Richardson won by 37 votes, and 1,891 undervotes and one overvote in the race between Dana Stancel and Ray Stevens, for the Palm Coast City Council, which Stevens is leading by two votes. Stancel and Stevens are vying for a spot in the November runoff against Andrew Werner.
Undervotes are when a voter leaves a race oval’s blank. In rare cases, the voter may have made an errant mark or circled a name, which the scanner would not have picked up. Those ballots will be examined by the Canvassing Board. Overvotes are when a voter marks more than one oval, or marks them oddly, unclearly, requiring the Canvassing Board to determine whether the vote is valid or not.
The machine recount is not expected to change the result announced on election night. This morning’s review of some 40 provisional ballots and problematic mail ballots did not change the outcome, reducing Richardson’s margin by three votes and keeping the Stevens-Stancel margin at two, after each of them got three additional votes. (See: “Ballot Review Doesn’t Change Outcome: Richardson Beats Danko, Stevens Holds 2-Vote Lead.”)
The hand recount Saturday of the ballots with questionable marks is also not expected to substantially change the outcome of the Richardson-Dankop race: the statistical possibility of a change is extremely remote. But it may change the outcome of the Stancel-Stevens race.
The recount started this afternoon with nearly three dozen people in the rooms where the Canvassing Board was meeting. (The Canvassing Board consists of Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart, County Judge Andrea Totten, and County Commissioner Dave Sullivan, with County Commissioner Donald O’Brien as the alternate. O’Brien took over for Sullivan around 8:30 p.m.)
Observers, officials and candidates passed the time in conversation, in calls home, in reading: the feel was more lounge than office, more social than political, with an entire absence of tension let alone tempers despite the occasion: Lenhart’s cheery disposition usually sets the tone.
The longer the recount lasted, the fewer people filled the room, the more humorous the mood. When the Stancels had had enough (Donna had joined her husband, Dana), Lenhart hugged husband and wife before they left. “I really had a great day,” Stancel said to Lenhart. He’d spent most of the day hanging out with Stevens. The two have decided that whoever loses will throw his support behind the other to beat Werner. “We really appreciate the work you guys do,” Stancel said.
Lenhart ordered pizza, played Sammy Hagar and Journey on her phone before the music played on overhead speakers, and for a while led a game of Spades with Richardson and others. After a lull, County Commissioner Leann Pennington appeared, with Kim Carney (the winner of her County Commission race) and others. Pennington said she’d been texting Richardson and getting no response. She got worried. So she decided to drop by.
Every once in a while a few damaged ballots would be handed the canvassers to be transferred to cleaner sheets. It happens: ballots with bad toner have to be reproduced. One member of the board would read out the votes, another would fill in the proper ovals, and the ballots would be returned to the scanning machine to be reads.
At one point ballots jammed in the scanner, resulting in a miscount of 300 ballots–not of votes–requiring the entire rescan of all early votes, as the batch had been an early voting batch. The Canvassing Board tested a second scanner and got it going so the job wouldn’t delay the rest of the ongoing count. But it became clear that the machine count would end too late to continue the operation further into the night.
