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Officials will need until Friday or later to determine winner of Hillsborough school board race

 
Published Nov. 17, 2016

TAMPA — Election officials said Thursday they need even more time to determine who won the Hillsborough County school board seat in countywide District 7.

More than 1 million pages could not be run through the scanners in time for a scheduled canvassing board meeting. So the counting will continue until Friday — or perhaps a bit longer.

"It's an extraordinarily time-consuming process," said Gerri Kramer, spokeswoman for the Hillsborough elections office.

Candidate Lynn Gray got 1,233 more votes than opponent Cathy James in the Nov. 8 election to replace retiring member Carol Kurdell.

But with 474,051 votes cast, that difference was under half of a percentage point, triggering a recount under state law.

The votes were scattered throughout more than 608,000 ballots, each consisting of two sheets of paper. That meant either separating all of the pages before running them through the scanners or just scanning all 1.2 million. Elections officials chose the latter alternative.

Another factor that slows the process, Kramer said, is that the mailed-in ballots arrive folded, and therefore take more time to scan.

Because the School Board race was countywide, happening on an election night that drew record turnout because of the presidential contest, the size of the recount was unprecedented.

"We have never had to process this many ballots before," Kramer said. Election officials expect the process will be complete by Sunday. On Tuesday, the School Board is scheduled to swear in its new members.

Contact Marlene Sokol at (813) 226-3356 or msokol@tampabay.com. Follow @marlenesokol.