(UPDATE: 11-14-18): Lewis says about 3,000 vote-by-mail ballots are left to run, which will be completed this morning.
She also says that early voting ballot counting will begin as soon as the vote-by-mail count is finished.
The second unofficial results will be submitted to the state and if a manual recount is ordered it will start tomorrow at 9 a.m., (November 15th).
Earlier reporting below.
DeLand, FL - A tabulation machine jam is forcing the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections office to re-calculate most of the votes from last week's midterm elections.
That issue sprung up today (November 13th) while
Lisa Lewis' (green jacket in middle) office was in the process of completing machine recounts for six separate races on the November 6th ballot, including the ones for Florida Governor between former United States House Representative Ron DeSantis and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson's fight to keep his United States Senate seat from current Florida Governor Rick Scott.
Lewis says all vote-by-mail and early voting ballots in the county were affected. That makes up 141,178 - or 61% - of the 230,959 total ballots cast.
"We were hoping to have the machine recounts completed yesterday," Lewis added. "However, when comparing the results from the machine recount to the first unofficial results, there was a difference in the vote by mail and early voting totals."
That 240-vote discrepancy, according to Lewis, likely came because one of the machines used to count the ballots jammed up.
"The count may not have recorded when the jam occurred," Lewis explained.
To fix that discrepancy, Lewis and the other two members of Volusia's Canvassing Board - the group which certifies the county's election results - decided to re-start the process today, counting just the 77,662 ballots which came by mail and the 63.516 which were received through early voting.
It's not clear at this point how much time this would add to the machine recount process, but Lewis says she's hoping to get it all done by today. All 67 Florida counties have to turn in those results by Thursday.
Besides the DeSantis-Gillum and Nelson-Scott races, four others are also under recount in Volusia, including the Edgewater City Council Seat 1 between Rocky Dorcy and incumbent Christine Power and the Volusia County Council District 1 battle between incumbent Pat Patterson and Barb Girtman.
The others are, technically, state races, though the Florida House District 26 seat between incumbent Democrat Patrick Henry and Republican Elizabeth Fetterhoff is based in Daytona Beach and doesn't stretch outside of the Volusia border.
The final one under recount is the Agriculture Commissioner tussle between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell. Like the governor and senator recounts, it affects the entire state.
In the case of the Ag Commissioner, Senate and HD 26 races, those are currently scheduled for manual recounts once the machine recount is complete. The only way that doesn't happen is if the machine recount has the margin of victory for any of the candidates involved at higher than 0.25%.
The other three races under machine recount all have a margin of victory over 0.25% but under 0.50%, which is why the machine recounts were ordered by state law.
Current results in those races have Power holding off Dorcy by 28 votes for ECC Seat 1, Girtman defeating Patterson for his VCC spot by 177 votes and the Republican DeSantis ahead of the Democrat Gillum by 33,684 votes statewide for the governorship.
Fetterhoff leads Henry in the HD 26 race by 59 votes, while Fried holds a 5,326 lead over Caldwell across Florida in the Ag Commissioner race and Scott is up over Nelson by 12,562 votes statewide in the Senate race.
(UPDATE: 11-14-18): Lewis says about 3,000 vote-by-mail ballots are left to run, which will be completed this morning.
She also says that early voting ballot counting will begin as soon as the vote-by-mail count is finished.
The second unofficial results will be submitted to the state and if a manual recount is ordered it will start tomorrow at 9 a.m., (November 15th).
Earlier reporting below.
DeLand, FL - A tabulation machine jam is forcing the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections office to re-calculate most of the votes from last week's midterm elections.
That issue sprung up today (November 13th) while Lisa Lewis' (green jacket in middle) office was in the process of completing machine recounts for six separate races on the November 6th ballot, including the ones for Florida Governor between former United States House Representative Ron DeSantis and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson's fight to keep his United States Senate seat from current Florida Governor Rick Scott.
Lewis says all vote-by-mail and early voting ballots in the county were affected. That makes up 141,178 - or 61% - of the 230,959 total ballots cast.
"We were hoping to have the machine recounts completed yesterday," Lewis added. "However, when comparing the results from the machine recount to the first unofficial results, there was a difference in the vote by mail and early voting totals."
That 240-vote discrepancy, according to Lewis, likely came because one of the machines used to count the ballots jammed up.
"The count may not have recorded when the jam occurred," Lewis explained.
