The supervisor of elections in Florida's Palm Beach County said her office missed the deadline to recount ballots Thursday.
“Given 3-4 more hours we may have made the deadline,” Susan Bucher told reporters after her office didn't meet the state-mandated 3 p.m. deadline.
Bucher defended her office Thursday morning, saying the incomplete recount wasn't "for lack of human effort." Bucher explained that the elections office in Riviera Beach shut down Wednesday night because "when you work about 45 hours in a row, you have to let people sleep."
Bucher says she believes her office did everything it could despite not completing the U.S. Senate race recount. She blamed aging equipment for the delays in meeting Thursday's deadline for machine recount results.
A federal judge earlier rejected a request to give counties more time beyond the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline to finish their recounts. The election will be certified Tuesday.
The state's 67 counties were required to do machine recounts of more than 8 million ballots cast in the contentious midterms. The U.S. Senate and governor's races were among the three within the vote margin to trigger a machine recount.
Several lawsuits have been filed by Democrats and Republicans in the wake of the close election.
