Wednesday the 14th, the Charlotte County Canvassing Board reconvened at 9 am to complete the machine recount of the 2018 election. The third day of counting focused on write-in ballots for Governor and Senate. Supervisor Stamoulis opened the session by explaining that it was possible for a voter to write in a candidate’s name rather than filling in the bubble next to their name, and those votes are still valid. Here is his opening statement prior to the beginning the third day of counting.
The scanners produce a report of all ballots with write-in votes, along with an image capture of the handwritten vote. This summary report showed that a total of 3115 ballots had write-in entries and 499 of those were in either the governor or senate race.
The process of comparing these 499 write-in votes against the list of valid candidates took approximately one hour. Here’s a short example of the process.
For a write-in vote to count, they must be cast for a qualified candidate who has pre-filed the proper application. They must also be cast in the proper races. For example, a write-in vote for Bill Nelson will count if cast in the Senate race but rejected if written in the Governor’s race.
There were 22 total valid write-in votes for qualified candidates in the Senate and Governor races.
Senate
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Bill Nelson – 4
Lateresa Jones – 11
Howard Knepper – 1
David Weeks – 4
Rick Scott – 0
Governor / Lt. Governor
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Andrew Gillum / Chris King – 1
Hal Johnson / Tim Hayes – 1
Ron DeSantis / Jeanette Nuñez – 0
The complete summary report from the 2018 machine recount. These results are unofficial until certified.
