Rep. West not giving up Fla. election fight: 'The math is not adding up'

Rep. West not giving up the election fight

Fla. congressman discusses why he's pursuing legal action in quest for a recount

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," November 13, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Congressman Allen West is not giving up. He is taking his election fight to court again. Congressman West joins us. Good evening, sir.

REP. ALLEN WEST, R-FLA. (Via Telephone): Good evening. How are you doing, Greta?

VAN SUSTEREN: Very well. I understand you filed a complaint in court that you want a full recount of early ballots in St. Lucie County. Is that correct, sir?

WEST: That is correct, Greta, because this goes back to election night about 1:00 in the morning when all of a sudden there was 4,400 vote swing in early voting. At the time I was ahead about 2,000 votes and then it swung over to my opponent and he was ahead. What we were told was that the St. Lucie county supervisor of elections decided to go back in and recount early votes that had already been counted.

We are asking for a complete recount of those votes. But there are many other voting irregularities. We have an individual who was locking precinct doors and counting votes behind those doors. We have discrepancies with the amount of people that logged in to vote with the amount of ballots who were actually submitted at some precinct violations. She has been in violation of Florida's Sunshine law because she had behind a closed doors meeting of the canvassing board, did not put out a public notice, and so there was no transparency. And then even when she told people she was going to do a full early vote recount this past Sunday, she did a partial vote, which is not in congruence with any type of statute whatsoever. So we have a series of irregularities, missteps, and the math is not adding up.

VAN SUSTEREN: As I understand it under Florida state law, if there is a 0.5 percent margin there is a recount by Florida law but the differential between you and your opponent is 5.8 so that you just missed that cutoff to force the recount, is that correct?

WEST: That is correct. And that happened this past Sunday when she did the partial recount and we were able to pick up a net of 535 votes. She was one that went in and selected that date she wanted the count. Then she all of a sudden cut it off abruptly. And once again, this is not about me, this is not about my opponent. This is about the integrity of our electoral process and doing what is right by the voters.

VAN SUSTEREN: You filed and your opponent is going to respond, I assume, and then you are going to have some sort of hear. Do you have any sort of hearing date? Can you give us some sort of timetable?

WEST: Hearing date has not been given. And the most important thing, we did not feel that there should be a certification of this until we have that complete recount of early votes. We do know that the secretary of state of Florida has sent down individuals to audit the St. Lucie county supervisor of elections there because as I said the numbers are adding up. There was almost 1,000 votes that dropped off the count based upon what she did in this partial recount on this past Sunday. So there is a lot of questions.

And I think the most important thing is if the people in America and from the congressional district can't have trust and confidence in the electoral process, then we're going to lost the sense of how we are as a Republic under the rule of law, and that's what we're standing up for. The results may end up where they may, but I want to make sure that the 22 years I spent in uniform to support the constitution of this country, I continue to do that and to serve the people.

VAN SUSTEREN: Congressman, thank you, sir.

WEST: Thank you, always a pleasure.