Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes reported to Historic City News this morning that there will be no re-counts from yesterday’s Primary Election, calling all of the decisions published on her website reliable.
There were 33 provisional ballots cast out of the 29,615 total votes cast in yesterday’s election; only 3 of those were voted in the City of St Augustine.
In order to trigger a re-count, according to Florida’s election laws, Oakes told reporters that the mechanically counted results in any contest must be 1/2 of 1 percent, or less (.50%). In that case, the ballots are all re-tabulated, by machine; if the race was closer than 1/4 of 1 percent, or less (.25%), then the 29,615 ballots would be manually recounted by the canvasing board.
Two candidates requested recounts in their race; Alan Kelso who trailed Rachael Bennett by .64%, and Deltra L. Long who ran third in a four-candidate race, trailing the leader, Roxanne Horvath by 1.36% and runner-up Bruce Maguire by .62%.
Due to the degree of the spread, and fact that none of the races was .50% or closer, Oakes said that both requests for a re-count were denied in accordance with state law.
“With 150,227 registered voters, and only 29,615 voting, the election represented the voice of merely 19.7% of the electorate; an abysmal representation of the county,” said Historic City News editor Michael Gold. “I put all of our resources at Vicky Oakes’ disposal to help her promote the importance of voting in the Presidential General Election this November.”