Campaign goes on as Florida seeks uncounted votes

? Workers waded through stacks of voting machines Saturday, pulling them out one by one in a search for uncounted votes from Florida’s disputed Democratic primary.

At the same time, leading candidate Bill McBride was back on the campaign trail, saying it was time to get past the primary election fiasco and work on unseating Gov. Jeb Bush.

McBride spoke to a raucous crowd of about 200 chanting “Bill! Bill! Bill!” at a Florida Education Assn. meeting in Orlando.

“What we’ve got is a party I think is ready to unite and party that’s ready to get on with the business at hand, and the business at hand is defeating the current governor,” McBride said.

But former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who trailed McBride by 8,196 votes in unofficial totals from Tuesday’s primary, said the business at hand is counting all the votes including thousands that may have been missed in her South Florida strongholds of Broward and Miami-Dade.

“I just want the votes to be counted,” Reno said on NBC’s “Today” show. “I’m happy to concede when the votes are there.”

Reno didn’t fault McBride for starting to campaign against Bush, who has run negative campaign ads about McBride.

“If I were Bill, I’d be campaigning now,” she said. “I’m not stopping anybody.”

On Friday, state elections officials rejected Reno’s request for a statewide recount. But counties are allowed to amend the vote totals due Tuesday to the state, so any votes that are found before then can still count.

After Wednesday, candidates have 10 days to challenge the results in court, although Reno has said she doesn’t plan to sue.

Instead, she is hoping counties find votes that went uncounted because of technical problems Tuesday. So far, Miami-Dade County has found more than 1,800 such votes and is searching for perhaps thousands more.

Miami-Dade officials will not release details about their vote review until Tuesday, the state deadline.