West asks court to order full recount of early votes in St. Lucie County

Republican Rep. Allen West‘s campaign says it filed a request for an injunction late today ordering St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker to conduct a recount of all 37,397 ballots from early voting rather than the 16,275 ballots the county canvassing board decided to recount Sunday.

A copy of the filing wasn’t immediately available.

A partial recount of early votes on Sunday showed Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy losing 667 votes and West losing 132 — a net gain of 535 votes for West that reduced Murphy’s small lead in the congressional District 18 race.

“It stands to reason that if the remaining early votes were to be recounted, additional errors would be uncovered and the tabulation of votes revised accordingly,” a statement from West’s campaign said. “Until these remaining early ballots are recounted, however, the Canvassing Board has arbitrarily applied differing counting standards to similarly situated ballots. The erroneous decision of St. Lucie County to ‘re-feed’ only some of the early votes cast in this election violates the Florida Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection to voters.”

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered three representatives to St. Lucie County to observe and report on the elections process there. St. Lucie, Martin and northern Palm Beach counties make up District 18.

This situation points out an obvious area in need of reform. When there is any sort of recount: WHY ARE THE SAME ELECTION OFFICIALS, WHO IN EFFECT STAND ACCUSED OF INCOMPETENCE OR MALFEASANCE, ALLOWED TO HANDLE THE RECOUNTING?

If a judge was sued or charged with a crime, would he be allowed to preside over his own case? Would the IRS find it acceptable for you to audit yourself? Recounts should be conducted by either the Secretary of State’s office, or personnel from another district, approved by the complainant.

Rally Tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7am! State Department of Elections coming to Ft. Pierce to audit St. Lucie County SOE!

Hello all,
I apologize for getting this email out so late this afternoon. . . but things are changing by the hour in St. Lucie County.

First of all, thanks to all who came to Ft. Pearce for the rally this morning. We had a great show of strength. Look for coverage on all the local news channels tonight.

We are looking for an even bigger crowd tomorrow when the State Department of Elections the state department of elections comes to Ft. Pierce to assess the tabulation processes in St. Lucie County. The recount in the mayoral race has been postponed and the scenario can change at any time.

Meanwhile, I understand that Patrick Murphy is up in Washington DC for the Freshmen Orientation.

PLEASE COME TOMORROW MORNING and BRING YOUR FRIENDS! Be a part of history!

We MUST stand up for voting integrity and demand a full recount! Here is the date, time, and location:

2nd Rally for Voting Integrity — Tomorrow
Wednesday, November 14th from 7am to 12pm
St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections
4132 Okeechobee Road Fort Pierce, FL 34947
(772) 462-1500

I’m reading different accounts of this story & one article states that this “recount” was actually just a re-feed/tabulation..they didn’t recount the votes, just re-tabulated. But the lib media keeps spinning by saying that it was a recount & it was not!! & then keep pointing out that Murphy is already on Cap Hill for freshman orientation, West sore loser etc..I’m soooo sick of this crap!

isn;t it stunning to see this election so rigged by the left and how they fought tooth and nail to have laws enforced or passed and yet the GOP does not even back a veteran up, a man who has done more for this countr than most in the GOP or the Dems.

Which is why we need to develop another True American Party that would garner about 80% of the votes.

Just had to note that the lib media keeps pointing out Murphy is already in D.C. reminds me of football towards the end of the game & if there’s a possibility that the last play is in question, penalty etc..the coach & team usually try to run of the field as fast as possible. Shuttling Murphy off to D.C., same game plan..

A release issued by the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network late Tuesday afternoon indicated that representatives from his local office will speak at a press conference Wednesday "to call for a mechanical and hand re-count of the ballots in ... the West/Murphy race."

Watch out everybody the Rev is getting his hands into this.

The NAN release said it will look into what it calls "charges of voter suppression and intimidation."

Translation: Poor ol' Gertrude is being suppressed and intimidated from carrying out her electioneering custom of vote fraud. Her hands are being tied by all those looking over her shoulder.

That’s almost 5% in error! THAT’S AWFUL.

To add some more perspective to that amount of error: When I first started working for them, our county used the the same punch-card ballots (that made Floriduh election famous). When I asked about the process and the error rates, our election manager explained that all punch cards were automatically run twice, and that the change from first run to second was (IIRC) somewhere around 0.01% So, if that dastardly punch card system was actually capable of near-flawless accounting, then there is no vaild excuse for St. Lucie's poor accounting.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.