Florida election recount underway
Close races for Senate and governor prompt statewide review
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. — After some early bumps, more than half of Florida’s 67 counties began recounting votes Sunday in the razor-thin Senate and state races, bringing back memories of the 2000 presidential fiasco.
In Democratic-leaning Broward County, the area containing Fort Lauderdale, the scheduled start of the recount was delayed Sunday because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. The Republican Party attacked Broward’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, of “incompetence and gross mismanagement” following the delay, which was resolved within two hours.
The county, the state’s secondmost populous, is emerging as the epicentre of controversy in the recount. Broward officials said they mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected, mostly because the signature on the return envelope did not match the one on file. It is a problem that appears impossible to fix because the ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots. Snipes said it would be unfair to throw out all the ballots.
The recount in most other major population centres, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, was ongoing without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. All counties face a Thursday afternoon deadline to complete the recount.
The reviews are an unprecedented step in Florida, a state that’s notorious for election results decided by the thinnest of margins. State officials said they weren’t aware of any other time either a race for governor or U.S. Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.
Unofficial results show that Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 0.41 percentage points in the election for governor. In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is 0.14 percentage points.
State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Once completed, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or below, a hand recount will be ordered.
As the recount unfolded, Republicans urged their Democratic opponents to give up and allow the state to move on. Scott said Sunday that Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by non-citizens to count, pointing to a Nelson lawyer objecting to Palm Beach County’s rejection of one provisional ballot because it was cast by a non-citizen.
“He is trying to commit fraud to win this election,” Scott told Fox News. “Bill Nelson’s a sore loser. He’s been in politics way too long.”
Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud. Gillum and Nelson have argued each vote should be counted and the process allowed to take its course.
Florida is also conducting a recount in a third statewide race. Democrat Nikki Fried had a 0.07 percentage point lead over Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner, one of Florida’s three cabinet seats.
From a distant glance, the recounts might dredge up memories of the 2000 presidential recount, when it took more than five weeks for Florida to declare George W. Bush the victor over Vice-President Al Gore by 537 votes, thus giving Bush the presidency.
But much has changed since then. In 2000, each county had its own voting system. Many used punch cards — voters poked out chads, leaving tiny holes in their ballots representing their candidates.
Some voters, however, didn’t fully punch out the presidential chad. Those hanging and dimpled chads had to be examined by the canvassing boards, a lengthy, tiresome and often subjective process.