Volusia To Start Manual Recount Saturday

County Complies With Democrats' Request

DELAND, Fla., Updated 1:24 p.m. EST November 10, 2000 -- Volusia County election workers are methodically going through write-in candidates before they dive into a manual recount that has been requested by the Gore campaign.

Volusia is the only county in Central Florida that has to recount by hand every single one of the 184,000 ballots cast in Tuesday's election.

The request for a hand recount from the Democrats was unanimously approved Thursday by the Volusia County canvassing board. They cited several glitches in the system as their reason for requesting the recount.

Election officials said that they expect to start the hand recount on Saturday and don't expect to be finished until next Tuesday; a week after the election.

Another minor problem cropped up Friday morning when a ballot bag was brought out of the vault without the proper seal attached.

After a brief investigation, the seal was found on the same shelf where the bag was located in the vault. The precinct number on the seal corresponded with the ballots in the bag, and the counting continued.

Meanwhile, Seminole County was the last in the state to complete its initial recount vote. The county did not wrap up the process until early Friday morning. Election officials said they wanted to make sure that they were accurate and that the count was done correctly.

Republicans carried Seminole County, but both candidates gained some votes in the recount.

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