But we almost always get them to balance to zero in the end. Orange County had 282,559 ballots cast but only 282,277 signatures. Elections officials there said they don't know the reasons for the disparity. Nor do they know in Levy County, where they counted 13,490 ballots and 13,465 voter signatures. There's a hundred reasons why it never comes back exactly right.
Nothing is perfect.
Some smaller counties, such as Gilchrist and Hamilton, said they found no problems, and other supervisors were unconcerned about mismatches in ballot and signature totals. In Sarasota, assistant elections supervisor Robert Riker said 1,200 to 1,300 people who voted on election day have subsequently been removed from voter rolls. Virtually all of them, Riker said, were legal voters on Nov. 7 but since then moved or died or asked to be taken off the voter list. About one third of Florida's 67 counties, including Pinellas, Hernando and Volusia, said they had not yet finished their reconciliations of voters lists. Several counties said the presidential mess in Florida highlights the need to reform the system.