I must've missed this: a Florida law change eliminates the manual recount

[eomer]

in many circumstances.

I saw this in a recent BradBlog article:

In a related bit of news, we were recently told by Sancho, during an on-air interview we conducted with him last Tuesday on The Young Turks radio program, that Florida state election law disallows the manual hand recounting, or auditing, of machine-counted ballots.

I posted on BradBlog (comment #63) that I thought this was a mistake and Brad (comment #92) and Anonymous (comment #99) answered back with some details.

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/laws/05laws/ch_2005-277.pdf">Florida House Bill 1567 does, in fact, eliminate the right to a manual recount in many cases.

Section 59, for example, adds this provision to the recount statute:

A manual recount may
not be ordered, however, if the number of overvotes, undervotes, and provisional
ballots is fewer than the number of votes needed to change the outcome
of the election.

Also, Section 59 deletes the following provision from the recount rules:

If the second set of unofficial returns pursuant to s. 102.141 indicates
that a candidate for any office was defeated or eliminated by between
one-quarter and one-half of a percent of the votes cast for such office, that
a candidate for retention to judicial office was retained or not retained by
between one-quarter and one-half of a percent of the votes cast on the
question of retention, or that a measure appearing on the ballot was approved
or rejected by between one-quarter and one-half of a percent of the
votes cast on such measure, any such candidate, the political party of such
candidate, or any political committee that supports or opposes such ballot
measure is entitled to a manual recount of the overvotes and undervotes cast
in the entire geographic jurisdiction of such office or ballot measure, provided
that a request for a manual recount is made by 5 p.m. on the third day
after the election.

HB 1567 was signed into law on 6/20/05 and the provisions having to do with recounts took effect on 1/1/06.

So, a note to those committing election fraud: just make sure to manufacture a large enough margin and you're home free!

Whoo-hoo for Florida -- always first to find a new way to screw up democracy!!!

Ohio, you're lagging -- better get these provisions in quick or you'll be faced with more pesky recounts.

[MercutioATC]

1. We're working on it...give us some time.

It's really not fair, Florida had a head start...

[infogirl]

2. Please go to

www.clintcurtis.com

This is where we need to go to BEGIN to fix our problem. Please read up...he is running, help him get his message (affidavit) out!:nuke: