Tensions rise as Florida recount gets underway
TALLAHASSEE: The first election workers have begun the enormous task of recounting ballots in Florida’s bitterly close races for the US Senate and governor, ramping up their efforts after the secretary of state ordered a review of the two nationally watched contests.
Miami-Dade County election officials began feeding ballots into scanning machines Saturday evening.
The tedious work in that one South Florida county alone could take days, considering some 800,000 ballots were cast. Multiply that by 67 counties in the nation’s third most populous state, and the scope of the task was beginning to sink in on Sunday.
The Florida secretary of state ordered the recounts on Saturday, an unprecedented step for the two flagship races in a state that took five weeks to decide the 2000 presidential election.
Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office said it was unaware of any other time either a race for governor or US Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.
Florida’s 67 counties can decide when to begin their recounts, but must complete them by Thursday. Elections officials in two large counties in the Tampa Bay area — Pinellas and Hillsborough — said they would begin recounts on Sunday morning.
Unofficial results show that Republican former US Representative Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by less than 0.5%, which will require a machine recount of ballots. In the Senate race, Republican Rick Scott’s lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is less than 0.25%, requiring a hand recount of ballots from tabulation machines that couldn’t determine which candidate got the vote.
HUGE RISE IN SPENDING ON ONLINE CAMPAIGNS
Digital spending on political ads set new records in the 2018 US midterm elections.
Digital media campaign spending rose by a whopping 2,400% from the 2014 midterm elections to $1.8 billion, roughly 20% of the total $8.9 billion in ad spending, according to estimates shared by various research firms.