Florida’s Secretary of State has announced that votes will be recounted in the state’s two most important elects, the races for Governor and the Senate.
By law, votes Florida state elections get recounted when the margin of victory is beneath 0.5 percent.
On Nov. 10, Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued orders for recounts in three races: for Senate, Governor, and Secretary of Agriculture, as results in all three races were within that margin.
The ballots will be recounted by machine—that is, the ballot sheets will be reentered into the vote-tabulating machines.
If this recount yields a margin of victory less than 0.25 percent, then any questionable ballots will be checked by hand as per state law.
Manual counts will also check whether “overvoted” and “undervoted”—those where people didn’t properly mark their vote in all races, or marked more candidates than permissible—were lawfully tabulated.
Secretary Detzner announced that total vote tallies would be frozen as of noon, Nov. 10.
One of the causes of controversy surrounding the contested elections is that many mail-in and provisional ballots were not counted in a timely fashion, and many ballots have been turning up well after Election Day.
Senate Race Under the Microscope
In a race with national implications, Florida is yet to know whether former Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, or two-term Democratic Senator Bill Nelson will be representing them in the Senate. Nelson has been a public servant since 1994. Scott was a successful businessman before becoming governor in 2010.
Governor Rick Scott announced on Nov. 8 that he had sued the Broward County and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections for various issues he found concerning due to the lack of transparency in the counting process.
Scott said that both Broward and Palm Beach counties, one of which has a long history of election law violations, was “mysteriously finding” boxes of uncounted ballots and that both counties had not reported the number of votes by mail and absentee ballots within the first 30 minutes of polls closing on Nov. 6.
Scott also said that the Broward County elections office was not providing voter and ballot information as per Scott’s campaign request, as is required by state law.
A judge has since ruled in Scotts favor over the law suits.
Nelson also issued a statement saying, “This process is about one thing: making sure every legal ballot is counted and protecting the right of every Floridian to participate in our democracy.
“We have every expectation the recount will be full and fair and will continue taking action to ensure every vote is counted without interference or efforts to undermine the democratic process.”
Senator Nelson also filed his own lawsuit challenging the state’s standards for accepting or rejecting provisional and mail-in ballots over concerns that signature mismatches may disqualify some votes that are in fact valid. He alleged a suppression of votes which could be affecting minority and young voters who seem to be disproportionately affected by issues with signature matching, and demanded that ballots without matching signatures could be counted as valid, The Tampa Bay Times reported.
At the end of counting, Scott led Nelson by 12,562 votes—a margin of 0.15 percentage points triggering the recount.
Who Will Lead Florida?
The race for governor has former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum running with Florida state congressman Rick DeSantis.
Gillum, a Democrat, is under investigation by the state ethics committee for potentially accepting payment for two trips from a lobbyist friend and two undercover FBI agents who were investigating other Tallahassee lawmakers for corruption.
DeSantis ran as a republican with the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
Gillum initially conceded victory to DeSantis, but as late returns trickled in from slower-moving counties, the numbers opened the governor’s seat up for a recount.
“I am replacing my earlier concession with an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote,” Mayor Gillum said on Nov. 10, according to the Sentinel.
Representative DeSantis released a statement on Nov. 10 saying the results were “clear and unambiguous, just as they were on Election Night.”
DeSantis leads Gillum by 33,694 votes, or 0.41 percent.
#Florida law requires counties report early voting & vote-by-mail within 30 minutes after polls close. 43 hours after polls closed 2 Democrat strongholds #BrowardCounty & #PalmBeachCounty are still counting & refusing to disclose how many ballots they have left to count. #Sayfie pic.twitter.com/ReXCaOzkZP
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018
A Race With Commercial Implications
The position of Secretary of Agriculture, which oversees Florida’s $7.5 billion industry, also remains undecided between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell.
Florida is the nation’s leading source for citrus fruits and sugar cane, and second in the nation as a producer of several vegetables.
Attorney Nikki Filed has never held elected office. She has been a public employee, working in the Alachua County Public Defender’s office, and now has a private law practice. Her opponent, Republican Matt Caldwell served as for three terms as a state Representative.
Caldwell filed a lawsuit against the Broward County Supervisor of Elections on Nov. 9.
“Over the course of the last two and half days, the Broward supervisor has continued to magically find boxes of ballots that have potentially altered the course of the race,” Caldwell said on Nov. 9, the News-Press reported.
For her part, Fried has already publicly proclaimed victory in the exceedingly close race.
