Florida officials are bitterly recounting how they rushed to finish the machine recount ordered in the midterm elections, only to miss the deadline by a mere two minutes.
That means that the difficult and labor intensive machine recount for one county will be invalidated in the official recount accounting, and their previous vote count will be used instead.
Elections worker Joe D’Alessandro said that the mistake was due to unfamiliarity with the system used to report the results to the state.
"We uploaded to the state two minutes late so the state has chosen not to use our machine recount results and they are going to use the first unofficial results as our second unofficial results," D’Alessandro explained.
“Basically I just worked my a** off for nothing," he added bitterly.
Broward County supervisor of election Brenda Snipes was celebrating their effort before it was discovered that they didn't meet the deadline.
"We are excited to be at this point," Snipes said.
Her tone changed after the mistake was noted.
“I have taken responsibility for every act in this office, good, bad or indifferent," she said. "I always hold myself accountable.”
The blunder caps off a weeklong series of castigations and recriminations between Democrats and Republicans over the recount, including tweets from President Donald Trump who posted scornful accusations from his social media account.
"Mayor Gillum conceded on Election Day and now Broward County has put him 'back into play,'" he mocked.
"Bill Nelson conceded Election - now he’s back in play!?" the president added. "This is an embarrassment to our Country and to Democracy!"
Although Gov. Rick Scott increased his lead over Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democratic candidate, the margin is still within 0.25 percent, which meant a manual recount was called in the election Thursday.
Scott called on Nelson to concede from his social media account Thursday.
"With the statewide machine recount finished, our margin of victory has increased by nearly 1000 votes," he tweeted.
"@SenBillNelson, it’s time to admit this race is over," he added.
