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Recount Fears Worry Pinellas Elections Chief

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI

cdolinski@tampatrib.com

Published: October 25, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - No elections official wants to re-live the post-election tsunami of 2000 that drowned Florida in a tidal wave of recount challenges and hanging chad. But - with John McCain and Barack Obama possibly heading for a photo finish in Florida, recounts could decide this year's presidential race.

That has Deborah Clark, the Pinellas County elections supervisor, worried about the tight deadlines for completing recounts and the state's capacity for gumming up the works.

No matter how quickly a county determines that a multicounty, state or federal race is close enough to trigger a machine recount, the county must wait for the go-ahead from state officials. The longer the state waits, the less time counties have to complete the process before the deadline on the ninth day following the general election.

Friday, Clark asked Secretary of State Kurt Browning if the state would cede some of its authority by giving counties permission in advance to start machine recounts as soon as they confirm where close victory margins warrant them.

Browning's response: no. He said he is not sure the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission can legally delegate the authority to order recounts, but it's a nonissue, really, because the commission won't be reconvening before the election. Changing the recount process, he said, would be too "disruptive."

"We will do whatever we can do to get recounts ordered," he said. "But again, the state canvassing commission is going to be the ones to direct that."

Legally, elections trigger meetings of the canvassing commission. Gov. Charlie Crist convenes the commission, which consists of the governor and two Cabinet members.

With the three located on the same floor of the Capitol, how hard would it be for them to hold an emergency meeting to consider Clark's request, asked Dan McCrea, president of the Florida Voters Coalition.

"When officials want to come to together to improve the way the system works, they can generally do it if they want to," McCrea said. "If not them, who?"

Crist's openly partisan campaigning for McCain will place his post-election actions on the state canvassing commission under the microscope, added McCrea.

The coalition has complained that Florida's deadline of 11.5 days to certify final results is too tight. Some states wait a month to certify final results.

Clark has been sounding the alarm since August, when she and her staff pulled an all-nighter to recount 77,000 ballots in a judicial race. If a presidential election recount is required, Pinellas could be counting up to seven times that many ballots.

Machine recounts are required for races where the margin is one-half of 1 percent. If the margin then narrows to one-quarter of 1 percent, a manual recount must occur.

Crist spokesman Sterling Ivey said the governor's attorneys do not believe that state law permits the canvassing commission to "preauthorize" counties to conduct machine recounts.

"Hopefully we won't have any recounts in Florida," he said.

Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382.

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