Undervotes in Sarasota County

SARASOTA -- Republican Vern Buchanan's 368-vote win over Democrat Christine Jennings in the 13th Congressional District is headed for a recount.

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent confirmed at a Wednesday press conference that elections officials are expecting a manual recount.

A timeline for the recount process means the final tally wouldn't be completed until Nov. 18, Dent said.

Jennings was meeting Wednesday with staff and recount attorneys, discussing options for vote recounts or a possible legal challenge.

A team of lawyers was said to be on the way to Sarasota early Wednesday morning. Kendall Coffey is the lead attorney for the Jennings campaign. Coffey was one of the Democrats' attorneys in the 2000 presidential recount in Florida, the former U.S. Attorney in Miami and a negotiator in the case of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez.

The Jennings camp said a difficulty the campaign faces is that a manual recount is apparently impossible with Sarasota County's touchsreen machines, making a court challenge a more likely avenue.

"You don't really map out the day after the election," said spokeswoman Kathy Vermazen when asked about how Jennings was spending the day.

Jennings plans a press conference to discuss her campaign's contesting of the election results at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Dent said her workers ran a great election and she did not know the exact causes of a 18,000-vote difference between the total number of ballots cast in Sarasota and those cast in the 13th race.

She said the undervote most likely was caused by voters overlooking the race on the computer screen because of the way the ballot was laid out.
She is confident the machines worked properly.

"Of course we're going to take a look" at what might have caused the undervote, Dent said.

The manual recount of the election would require Dent's office to look at ballots where no candidate or both candidates were selected.

She did not say how election officials would treat those undervote and overvote ballots, such as whether they would be counted based on the other candidates individual voters chose in other races.

Dent said she received reports from both Jennings and Buchanan supporters that the machine did not register their vote for the 13th race.

She encouraged voters who had problems to report them to her office, but didn't know what they would be able to do.

"After the fact, there's not a lot we can do about it."

Undervotes in Sarasota County

Dent planning for recount; Jennings exploring legal avenues