Kendall Coffey Speaks at the Florida Priorities Summit

Almost two decades after the most intense recount in American history to date, attorneys from the Al Gore and George W. Bush legal teams are saying Florida is in a better position to deal with recounts, but there are still several old issues that can occur.

Kendall Coffey, who was a part of Al Gore’s legal team joined a few others at the Florida Priorities Summit to talk about how the process of counting votes has changed since the presidential election in 2000 in Florida. County supervisors across the state were swiftly counting ballots in the Florida Senate and governors’ races preparing for the deadline for machine recounts.

Coffey believes the recount process has improved and that it can be attributed to the new standards that have been put in place to determine voters’ intent when a ballot is in question. He also pointed out there are still a lot of individual vote-counting problems. Broward County has had the most issues because of its delayed vote tallying.

He also stressed that Florida needs to maintain the public’s confidence in the recount process, which is something that didn’t happen back in 2000.

He added, “A lot of late-night comedians were treating it as a joke.”

The summit marks the culmination of the Florida Influencer Series for 2018 – a project by the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald and Bradenton Herald. Over the past six months, the Influencers shared their ideas on how to address the most important issues facing the state and responded to questions from readers.