Jim,
The story from Pinellas:
Thursday November 9 10:15 AM ET
Florida's Pinellas Recount Shows Swing to Gore
CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - Elections workers in Florida's Pinellas County launched a second recount of votes on Thursday after a first recount produced a swing of more than 400 votes to Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), an elections official said.
The large swing was due in part to some 400 ballots that workers failed to count on election night.
``They were in house but the (counting machine) operator did not follow procedure,'' Pinellas Deputy Supervisor of Elections Joan Brock said. ``They hadn't been counted election night.''
The election night tally of 406,555 ballots cast in Pinellas, a west coast county that encompasses Clearwater and St. Petersburg, showed 200,212 votes for the vice president and 184,884 for Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites).
The recount on Wednesday of 406,948 ballots -- including those previously uncounted -- had 200,616 for Gore and 184,823 for Bush.
The results produced a loss of 61 votes for Bush and a gain of 404 for Gore, a net swing of 465 votes.
If the Pinellas recount results hold, they would reduce the Bush margin in Florida to about 500 votes with about half of Florida's 67 counties reporting recount results. Bush's election night lead of 1,784 had already been reduced to 941 with early recount results.
Brock said Pinellas began recounting its votes early on Thursday and would have results by midafternoon. |
