Absentee Ballot Count Over in Miami-Dade, press conf link: [View all]

[The Straight Story]

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/Miami-Dade-Still-Counting-Ballots-Thursday-177834791.html
(live video feed there)


Over a day and a half after the 2012 Election ended, the counting of absentee ballots in Miami-Dade finally finished Thursday morning, Elections Department officials said.

Officials announced around noon that all of the absentee ballots had been processed. Workers will start processing provisional ballots Friday.

As of 9 a.m., around 500 absentee ballots still had to be counted at the elections department's headquarters in Doral, county Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley said.

"This is simply a matter of sheer volume, we're dealing with a tremendous amount of paper," Townsley said Thursday. "We have done everything we could possibly do to prepare, again, it's the volume and we're managing it very effectively. We will not rush this process, we will make sure that every vote is counted."

Workers had been counting the ballots non-stop since polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Absentee ballots take longer to process than when residents vote in person and go through several verification levels before they make it to a scanner.