Sarasota County Charter Amendment Headed For Manual Recount

After a machine recount of votes Monday for the Sarasota County Charter Amendment, the Sarasota County Canvassing Board will manually recount the votes Thursday.

The Canvassing Board ordered the manual recount Wednesday during its machine recount process, following state procedures. State law requires recounts when races are separated by less than one quarter of a percent. 

The question before voters asked if all county charter amendments should be voted on during general election as long as they are filed within 120 days of the election. The move would have saved the county more than $400,000 each time a special election would have to be held.

The measure was narrowly defeated with 50.1 percent of voters choosing no, which comes to 83,366 votes. The yes votes received 49.9 percent of the vote, or 83,044 votes, according to the unofficial results from the election.

A manual recount of the overvotes and undervotes cast for the ballot measure will be conducted beginning at 8 a.m. Thursday, at the Office of the Supervisor of Elections, 101 South Washington Blvd., Sarasota.  The recount process is open to the public.

The 2012 Sarasota County Canvassing Board includes County Judge David Denkin, Supervisor Dent, and, alternately, former County Commissioner Paul Mercier and Judge Emanuel LoGalbo., Jr.