Theres no reason why these places can’t have their votes counted three hours after they took place. They are figuring out how to get Romney out front.
A guy is driving votes to the HQ.. the fix is in.
Really, Perry out? Too bad. I was a Perry supporter. Wish he had gotten in sooner. Maybe he could have avoided some of the early gaffs which sunk his campaign.
With an eight-vote statewide margin of victory anything is possible — both the Romney and Santorum campaigns knew for several hours the victory would boil down to a few dozen or at most a hundred or so votes and people have been known to do bad things when pressured — but a three-hour delay in a manual vote count would not be unusual. I've seen hand-counts run for much longer that that.
What do you do with a ballot that isn't clearly legible? We'd like to think voters are clear in who they want, but the simple fact of the matter is voter intent is not always obvious. How about a situation where a caucusgoer decides to argue about something, delays the caucus, and the chairman decides to be gracious and let the caucusgoers debate things rather than use a heavy hand to move things along?
On the other hand, rather than speculating about possible fraud, what about a situation where a designated representative for a candidate learns via cell phone how close the race is statewide, and out of an abundance of caution, decides to ask that the manual vote in his caucus be double-checked?
Add in communications delays, and a three-hour delay seems quite reasonable.