Still Counting in Palm Beach County

On the day after the election, at Palm Beach County's tabulation center, vote counting machines whirred, workers opened envelopes with ballots and canvassing board members continued reviewing problem ballots. Why is Palm Beach County still tallying votes?

There are a couple of reasons. First, several thousand late-arriving absentee ballots needed to be opened and run through the tabulating machines. These ballots arrived before the deadline on Tuesday.

The second big issue: dealing with the inability of cartridge-reading equipment to read cartridges storing votes from a couple of precincts and a couple of early voting locations. Midday Wednesday elections workers started taking the back-up paper ballots from the affected precincts and early polling locations and running those ballots through the tabulating machines.

"There were a few cartridges that couldn't be read for whatever reason," explained acting elections supervisor Brad Merriman. "The process is you go back to the ballots, and count the ballots. The system is built that way so that if you have problems you can go back and make sure you have everything accounted for."

The new totals will be added to existing numbers in the next day or so. Canvassing board members also have yet to pass judgement on about 2,000 provisional ballots.

The still uncounted votes are not expected to affect outcomes in any races.

Overall, acting supervisor Merriman said he's pleased at the lack of major glitches. He said the voter turnout ended up being around 70 percent.