ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Elections officials at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday were awaiting the arrival of the machine containing voting results from the Tradition Town Hall, Precinct 89.

Poll workers left the machine and locked up the precinct, Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker said, but she didn’t know why.

The first crew that went to retrieve the machine accidentally grabbed the one without any results.

“We’ve never had it happen before,” Walker said.

At 1:27 a.m., MSNBC called the FL-18 race for Patrick Murphy. But the race is close and there are still votes being counted. Murphy spoke at 1:30 a.m. and declared victory.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting Murphy is leading U.S. Rep. Allen West. Murphy has 159,959 votes to West’s 157,578. Percentage-wise that’s 50.37 percent to 49.63 percent.

–TCPalm

Tags | Allen West, Gertrude Walker, Patrick Murphy