Judge: Both sides in Florida recount should calm rhetoric

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — After Republicans, including President Donald Trump, made unsubstantiated accusations of illegal activity, a judge on Monday urged the warring sides in the Florida recount to “ramp down the rhetoric,” saying it erodes public confidence in the election for Senate and governor.

The state’s law enforcement arm and elections monitors have found no evidence of wrongdoing, but lawyers for the Republican party and the GOP candidates joined with Trump in alleging that irregularities, unethical behavior and fraud have taken place since the polls closed last week.

“An honest vote count is no longer possible” in Florida, Trump declared Monday, without elaborating. He demanded that the election night results — which showed the Republicans leading based upon incomplete ballot counts — be used to determine the winner.

Trump went on to allege that “new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” and that ballots are “massively infected.” It was unclear what he was referring to.

The recount that is underway is mandated by state law.

Much of the Republicans’ ire was centered on Democrat-leaning Broward County and its Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, a Democrat who was appointed in 2003 by then-Republican governor Jeb Bush. She has been re-elected four times. Critics have suggested the slow pace of ballot-counting in Broward is suspicious.

Broward elections officials have said this year’s count was encumbered by the unexpectedly high turnout for a midterm election and the unusual length of this year’s ballots, which contained 12 state constitutional amendment proposals, partly as a result of a constitutional revision commission that meets once every 20 years.

Bush said Monday on Twitter that Snipes should be removed from office, saying there was “no question” that she “failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts, undermining Floridians’ confidence in our electoral process.”