It’s rare for beauty queens to face comparisons to Al Gore and former President George W. Bush, but a Miss Florida pageant voting debacle makes it just too perfect to resist.
The original winner of the 2014 Miss Florida pageant lost her crown Friday after pageant organizers said there was a vote-count error.
Elizabeth Fechtel, a 20-year-old student at the University of Florida, had been declared the pageant winner a week prior.
But the ballot counter didn’t realize that one of the five judges had changed his mind, writing a new line up on the side of his ballot.
When his votes were taken into consideration, the true Miss Florida was Victoria Cowen, a 21-year-old student at Florida State University.
Florida is infamous for its vote counting issues.
In 2000 presidential election, the state was ultimate decision maker between Bush and Gore. But it took multiple recounts and an eventual Supreme Court decision to settle the matter. For the 2004 election, the state faced scrutiny again for its planned purging of the state voter rolls that would eliminate inactive voters and felons. Subsequent elections have almost all brought their own sets of complaints and issues.
After the Miss Florida mix-up was brought forward, pageant organizers sought an independent review, Mary Sullivan, executive director of the Miss Florida pageant, told Reuters.
“Our organization had to do the right thing, and the right thing is to crown the young woman that was intended to be crowned,” Sullivan said.
Fechtel will be the runner-up, and Cowen will compete in the Miss America contest in September.
