It was just another human error - Lee Co, FL

[DoYouEverWonder]

Early I posted a thread in regards to Lee County, FL losing 743 votes between Nov 2 and Nov 15th, when the election was certified. So I called the Lee County, Supervisor of Elections and this is what she told me.

Apparently, there were two local elections that triggered a recount but only in a few precincts. During the recount they found that someone had counted a batch of votes twice during the initial tabulation. According to the SOE, this was just one of those human errors. She knew that it would be human error, because her touch screen systems performed perfectly. She was very glad though that they didn't have to recount the whole county because the items that needed to be recounted, only effected a small portion of the precincts.

So it seems to me, that the only way anyone can find an error is if the election results were close enough to trigger a recount. Too bad, it doesn't seem to phase these folks that if you are finding mistakes in just a small sampling, then you probably have other mistakes in other precincts as well?

Maybe things didn't work so perfectly after all?


UNOFFICIAL ELECTION NIGHT RETURNS - Posted Nov 3rd

Lee County
Percent reported 87.60%

Bush / 114,153
Kerry / 76,874
Total / 191,027


1st SET OF UNOFFICIAL RETURNS - Downloaded on Nov 10th

Percent reported 100.00%

Bush / 144,414
Kerry / 94,365
Total / 238,779


Final Official Results - Posted 11/14/04

Percent reported 100.00%

Bush / 144,176
Kerry / 93,860
Total / 238,036


Bush / -238
Kerry / -505
Total / -743