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Deja vu as race for Harris' seat appears headed for recount |
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Written by BY PHIL DAVIS
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Wednesday, 08 November 2006 |
SARASOTA, Fla. -- A recount in Florida involving Katherine Harris? No, it's not 2000 again. The race to replace her in the U.S. House was so close that it likely would trigger an automatic recount.
This time, there won't be dimpled chads and butterfly ballots and Harris won't be overseeing any disputes. Allegations of trouble centered on the touch-screen voting machines that she championed as Florida's elections chief to try to prevent a repeat of the presidential vote nightmare.
Auto dealer Vern Buchanan hoped to keep the 13th District in GOP hands and he declared victory with a 373-vote lead - 0.157 percent - in unofficial returns. But Democratic banker Christine Jennings refused to concede and her campaign said the ATM-style machines lost thousands of votes in Sarasota County.
"Sarasota voters have been victimized by not having their votes count," Jennings said in a statement Wednesday, adding that her campaign was documenting reports from voters. She did not mention a legal challenge.
The Buchanan campaign said in a statement that a recount would confirm the results: "U.S. Rep.-elect Vern Buchanan won a majority of the votes in this race."
Kathy Dent, Sarasota County's supervisor of elections, defended her staff, the voting machines and poll workers. She said there is little she can do to help voters who complained of problems after leaving the polls.
More than 18,000 Sarasota County residents voted in other races, including the local hospital board race, but chose not to cast a ballot in the 13th District.
Dent said thousands of voters either overlooked the race, which was pushed to a second screen by a glut of minor U.S. Senate candidates on the ballot, or decided not to vote for either candidate in a race marked by intense mudslinging.
"My machines have recorded accurately for 40 elections," she said.
She couldn't explain why the undervote rate in her county was so much higher than those reported in the four other counties in the district, which Harris won in 2002.
Harris lost her bid for U.S. Senate to Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson. Harris spokeswoman Jennifer Marks said the campaign had no comment on the district race. Harris was with her family and unavailable for comment.
Under state law, machine recounts would be ordered if the difference between two candidates is less than half a percent of the votes cast when unofficial results are due Sunday. If the machine tallies find the difference is less than a quarter of a percent, a manual recount is conducted.
To do a manual recount for touch-screens, officials go back over the images of the electronic ballots where the machine didn't register a choice in the race. But state rules essentially say that if the machine doesn't show a voter chose a candidate, the voter is assumed to have meant to skip the race - because there's no way to determine otherwise.
Results need to be certified by Nov. 20.
The fate of the White House doesn't depend on this recount, and neither does the House's. Democrats gained enough seats without this race to overwhelmingly regain control of the House.
But mention the words recount and Katherine Harris, and many immediately recall the tense 36 days of seemingly endless lawsuits and challenges that ended when George W. Bush was given Florida's 537 votes, and with them, the presidency.
The election overhaul law passed in 2001 outlawed the flawed punch-card ballots, requiring counties to replace them with the touch-screen devices or optical scan machines that read paper ballots that voters filled in. Then-Secretary of State Harris pushed for the changes.
"Now we're the national model instead of the national concern," she said in late 2001. "There'll never be a hanging, dangling or pregnant chad again."
But Tuesday's problems had Dent wishing for the old days.
"Quite frankly, Sarasota County didn't have a problem with its chads and I would have been happy to stay with the punch-card system," Dent said. "But Florida law says I couldn't do that."
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