James and Bentley no better after recount

Published 3:20 pm Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Steve Norman says that neither Robert Bentley nor Tim James benefited from a recount of Butler County votes.

The recount, which began early this morning, ended showing one less vote for both Tim James and Robert Bentley, for no net change for either campaign.

This brings the total to 1030 votes for Tim James and 249 for Robert Bentley.

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Norman said the machines were calibrated only to read the governor contest today, which differed from how they were operating on June 1.

“There were numerous contests on the ballot June 1, and the machine had to try to read each one of them,” Norman said.

This meant that a vote cast for governor could be rejected, but the rest of the ballot would still count, Norman said.

“Today, if there was an ‘under’ vote, where the machine couldn’t read the governor vote, it would spit it back out and we could inspect it manually.”

Norman said anything from not marking the line dark enough to using the wrong type of ink could have caused these votes to go uncounted.

Tim James continues to trail statewide, though results of recounts from all counties are not yet available.