Supervisor Reveals Reason for Missing Votes

We now know why nearly 700 votes failed to show up during the first count in last week's special election in West Palm Beach. Thursday Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson held a news conference addressing the problem, as well as the criticism he's receiving.

 Anderson says it was a security feature in the new optical scan voting system.  That feature keeps vote cartridges from being tallied if they've been used before.

 "Unless you were aware of that feature, when that particular signal was given off, you would not know how to respond to it," said Anderson.  He says that explains why his office didn't detect the shortage of 697 votes for more than two days.

 Anderson says his staff did go through training on the new system, but he says the training did not cover this particular situation.

 A spokeswoman with the Secretary of State's office tells CBS 12, the secretary had stressed to supervisors, the importance of training on the new voting systems.  Spokeswoman Jennifer Davis says both the Elections office and the equipment maker, Sequoia, share blame.

 "We can, I guess, agree with that" to a point, says Anderson.  "We certainly would have like to have had more training and more time to prepare ourselves for this.  But it was a unique opportunity.  A special election was occurring.  We wanted to take advantage to be as well prepared as possible for the fall."

 Anderson says he did not have to use the new system for the special election, but he's glad he did.  "Just think, otherwise this would be a problem we would not have been aware of going into the fall election," says Anderson.

 The supervisor says his staff will probably just disable the security feature during the next vote.  A department staffer said at the news conference, the security feature isn't relevant to elections in Palm Beach County.

 Anderson apologized to the public and the candidates in the special election.  He says an internal audit shows the final tally is now accurate.  The new count did not change the election's outcome.  Kimberly Mitchell regained her commission seat with 59 percent of the vote.