Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher now says it's possible her department will not make Wednesday's 3 p.m. deadline to recount ballots in Florida's highly contested Senate race.
At a news conference, Bucher said if they cannot make the deadline, they will submit the original election ballots to the state.
Only the IT director can rescan the precinct ballots, and according to Bucher that's a tedious and technical process. Bucher says state law requires them to continue counting ballots until a recount is complete, but Bucher said she knows they may miss the deadline.
Supervisor of elections Susan Bucher says chances are “slim” they’ll meet 3pm recount deadline even for Senate race. @FOX29WFLX@WPTV#FloridaRecountpic.twitter.com/HTuTGqHQuh
— Stephanie Susskind (@StephanieWPTV) November 15, 2018
Even with the recount deadline looming, operations at the Palm Beach County tabulation center in Riviera Beach took a pause overnight.
Bucher said the rest of the work needed to complete the recount for the Senate race is very tedious because of earlier issues that happened with the tabulation machines and the information technology manager is the only person with enough expertise to do it correctly.
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Both that IT manager and Bucher had been at the tabulation center for three days straight, according to Bucher, so she said they really needed rest to finish the recount properly.
The IT manager is tasked with running election day ballots from more than two dozen precincts to identify tallies that went missing after machines malfunctioned.
Bucher believes they will have enough time to do that Thursday to make the 3 p.m. recount deadline in the Senate race, but she doesn't expect to meet the deadline for the recount for the governor or agriculture commissioner races.