A top White House advisor has said that Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis have won their races in Florida for Senator and governor respectively.
“The evidence is that Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis have won,” Kellyanne Conway said on Nov. 11 during an appearance on ABC.
Mandatory recounts in both races are underway after the margin fell under 0.5 percent as mandated by state law.
Conway acknowledged the recount but said the leads of Scott and DeSantis won’t be overcome in the recount. “There has been no recount that has ever turned around a total as large as we have now in either of those races,” she noted.
State law mandates that returns from the recounts are due on Nov. 15.
Recounts typically don’t change election results, according to election research group FairVote. Data from the group shows that out of 4,687 statewide general elections between 2000 and 2015, just 27 were followed by recounts, reported FiveThirtyEight. Of those, three resulted in a change in the outcome. The mean swing in the recounts was 282 votes.
In the final results, which triggered the recounts, Scott won by 12,562 votes while DeSantis won by 33,684 votes.
Supervisors Violate the Law
The focus on Florida’s races has zeroed in on Brenda Snipes, Broward County’s supervisor of elections, and her counterpart in Palm County, Susan Bucher.
Snipes had illegally destroyed ballots concerning the Democrat primary, a judge ruled earlier this year, violating both state and federal laws. She signed a certificate stating that no court cases involving the ballots were pending, despite there, in fact, being a court case involving the ballots.
Snipes claimed the destruction was a “mistake,” adding there was “nothing on my part that was intentional.”
Snipes has repeatedly come under fire heading the Broward County count and recount in the midterm races. Her office defied a court order by a judge on Nov. 9 after a judge ruled she violated Florida’s constitution. The vote total she sent to the state included ballots rejected by the county’s Canvassing Board.
Bucher banned reporters from videotaping the ballot count and has also claimed it’s “impossible” for her county to meet the deadline mandated by state law. She violated state law by not reporting all early voting and vote-by-mail results to the Department of State within 30 minutes of polls closing on Nov. 6.
Scott filed three more lawsuits, two against Snipes and one against Bucher, over the weekend, on top of the two he filed earlier.