Because this thing is never, ever going to end, a hearing has been scheduled for Friday to hear Allen West's request for a full recount of roughly 37,379 St. Lucie County ballots.
The county did a partial recount last weekend that made the race a bit tighter, but still not enough to trigger a full recount. The state requires a 0.5 percent margin or less for a recount, which is not the case between West and his opponent Patrick Murphy -- before and after the St. Lucie partial recount.
And since West isn't happy about the results, the answer is to obviously keep counting ballots forever until he wins.
"Turnout percentages will show over 100% due to a two page ballot," Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker said in a statement. "The tabulation system (GEMS) provides voter turnout as equal to the total cards cast in the election divided by the number of registered voters. Also note that some voters chose not to return by mail the second card containing the amendments."
Walker said the partial recount was done because some votes were counted twice after an electronic memory cartridge failure in some machines.
This is fairly common in Florida (of course!), but it's nothing that a recount of those specific ballots can't fix.
West claims the partial recount of early votes St. Lucie County did last weekend was "improper." His campaign manager, meanwhile, claims the election was downright stolen from them.
"What originally looked like dangerous incompetence," said West's campaign manager, "is looking more and more like a willful attempt to steal an election."
Because there's no way people decided to not vote for the crazy person who goes around calling everyone a Commie.
On Wednesday, the state sent David Drury from the Florida Division of Elections to observe the elections process in St. Lucie County.
Meanwhile, Murphy has been in Washington, D.C., attending freshman orientation on Capitol Hill. West's camp was none too pleased about that and would prefer Murphy not be such a go-getter and stop acting like he won, even though the votes say he did after Election Day results and a recount of absentee votes.
For his part, West has been making the media rounds pleading his case. And by "media rounds," we mean, Fox News channel (because they ain't socialists like the rest of the lamestream media!)
West's lawyers will argue that a recount should still be done due to the irregularities at certain precincts. Walker and her staff did a partial recount to take care of those irregularities. And yet, West was still the loser.
Should the court order a full recount and Murphy is still declared the winner, we expect West to request a Super for Real This Time Recount, which we just made up. But West is welcome to try our idea if he wants.
The hearing is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
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