Describing Florida as being “the laughing stock of the world election after election and we chose not to fix this” during a hearing earlier in the day, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker denied a request to extend the deadline for submitting the recount of votes in three statewide races.
That means that Florida’s election supervisors have until 3 p.m. Thursday to report their recount numbers to the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee.
It now looks like Palm Beach County will be the only county that will miss the deadline. Local election works appears to have stopped counting votes Wednesday evening. Election supervisor Susan Bucher, who took responsibility for not meeting the deadline, had said the county didn’t have the equipment to meet the deadline in the first place and then the machines they did have started overheating on Tuesday causing further delays.
Judge Walker was critical of Bucher saying Florida has a history of “razor thin” elections, yet Palm Beach County delayed purchasing enough voting machines to handle a recount.
State law requires that any county that fails to meet the deadline must submit their original vote totals to the state.
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