BRADENTON, Fla. -- Election officials in Manatee County are counting votes not once, not twice but for the third time.
The recount from last week's election began Monday. Around 2 p.m., after about 43,000 ballots had been counted, WWSB-TV reports staff realized they made a mistake.
Ballots largely fall into two categories: over ballots or under ballots. The first has two or more ovals filled while the latter has none filled at all. These sort of ballots are excluded during a recount, but staff caught that only over ballots were excluded, according to WWSB.
Some 170,000 ballots in total have to be counted all over again, wasting about five hours.
"We kicked out blank ballots and overvotes, but we didn't kick out the undervotes," said Manatee County supervisor of elections Michael Bennett.
Election officials say they will meet the Thursday state deadline for the second set of unofficial returns -- they'll just have to work longer hours.
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