Governor, Senate races face recount
Automatic recounts triggered by margins below 0.5, 0.25 points
The Florida governor’s race is heading to a machine recount and the U.S. Senate race will face a lengthier manual recount after returns from Broward County on Thursday pushed Democrats Andrew Gillum and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson closer to their Republican opponents Ron DeSantis and Gov. Rick Scott.
On Thursday night, Scott announced that his Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee were suing Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes under public records law to force her to reveal how many ballots are left to count. The suit, filed in Broward Circuit Court, seeks an emergency hearing.
He said he has ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. He blasted Palm Beach elections chief Susan Bucher and Snipes for “incompetence.”
“The people of Florida deserve fairness and transparency, and the supervisors are failing to give it to us,’’ Scott said at late-night news conference at the Governor’s Mansion. “Every Floridian should be concerned that there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward counties.’’
Dan McLaughlin, a Nelson spokesman, responded, “The goal here is to see that all the votes in Florida are counted and counted accurately. Rick Scott’s action appears to be politically motivated and borne out of desperation.”
In Broward, Snipes said she had no comment but added that most of the counting was complete.
Meanwhile, Democrat Nikki Fried took the lead over Republican Matt Caldwell by 564 votes in the race for agriculture commissioner, which is also headed to a manual recount.
Gillum trailed DeSantis by about 36,000 votes, or 0.44 percentage points, as of Thursday night. A recount is automatically triggered if the margin drops below 0.5 points.
In the Senate race, Nelson trailed Scott by about 15,000 votes, a margin of 0.18 points. A hand recount of ballots, longer and more thorough than a machine recount, is triggered if the margin falls below 0.25 points.
The attorney for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson had earlier predicted that Nelson would eventually win.
“We believe at the end of the day, Sen. Nelson is going to be declared the winner and return to the U.S. Senate,” said Marc Elias, a recount attorney hired by the Nelson campaign, in a conference call.
Elias pointed to significant numbers of ballots not yet tabulated in Broward, where even Snipes said Wednesday night, "I can't give you an exact number. I'm not sure. I'm really not sure.”
But Scott campaign spokesman Chris Hartline called Elias a “hired gun” and added, “for Bill Nelson, the task is getting the ‘win’ …no matter what. Let’s be clear: When Elias says ‘win,’ he means ‘steal.’ It is sad and embarrassing that Bill Nelson would resort to these low tactics after the voters have clearly spoken.”
Gillum conceded to DeSantis on Tuesday night, and DeSantis was busy Wednesday announcing his transition staff in emails describing him as “governorelect.” But unless Gillum formally declines a recount, it would go forward if it gets within the needed margin — and his campaign staff did not look like it would turn down the opportunity.
“On Tuesday night, the Gillum for Governor campaign operated with the best information available about the number of outstanding ballots left to count,” Gillum spokeswoman Johanna Cervone said in a statement. “Since that time, it has become clear there are many more uncounted ballots than was originally reported.”
The campaign hired attorney Barry Richard, who represented the Bush campaign during the contentious 2000 presidential election in Florida, who was “monitoring the situation closely and is ready for any outcome, including a statemandated recount,” Cervone said. “Mayor Gillum started his campaign for the people, and we are committed to ensuring every single vote in Florida is counted.”
Election officials in each of Florida’s 67 counties have until noon Saturday to report unofficial results to the state, and Elias said a machine recount would likely be completed by Nov. 15 with further overvote and undervote counting until Sunday, Nov. 18. But the actual timeline for a full, manual recount — which has never happened in Florida, even in 2000 — is unclear.
Elias, who had worked on successful Democratic recounts for former senators Harry Reid and Al Franken, said, “I couldn’t tell you if Sen. Nelson will be ahead slightly or behind slight” when canvassing ends Saturday. “It’s an equal probability right now. … And when I say the race is a jump ball, I mean that. And when I say Sen. Nelson’s going to prevail at the end, I mean that too.’’
Broward has been scene of drama since the election, with the Nelson campaign holding off on conceding Tuesday night due to votes from seven precincts that had to be driven to elections centers and manually entered from thumb drives.
Of Broward ballots already counted, more than 24,000 people voted for a governor candidate but didn’t record a vote for a Senate candidate, according to county results released Wednesday, which Elias said was extremely unusual.
There has been speculation that the Senate race’s placement in the bottom left corner of the Broward ballot, away from the state races that got more votes, was responsible for the undercount. But Elias said that there were significant disparities even between congressional districts in the county meant the issue could be with voting machines.
“The scanning equipment may not have caught it,” he said. “The intent is clear, but the machine couldn’t pick it up.”
He also said the idea that thousands of voters looked at the governor’s race as the most important and didn’t vote in the Senate race also isn’t plausible, saying even the state attorney general’s race got more votes recorded.
Elias said historically, recounts tend to pick up more Democratic votes, even in GOP-dominated counties, though he added even Miami-Dade has a history of rejecting more mail-in ballots from African American and Hispanic voters than whites.
“It’s important every voter who cast a ballot has it counted and counted accurately,” Elias said. If not, “we will not hesitate to address that in the courts. We will not allow people to be disenfranchised due to administrative procedures that disadvantage minority voters.”
Elias also stressed anyone who filed a provisional ballot should contact their supervisors of elections office by 5 p.m. Thursday to fix any issues with the ballot and make sure it would be counted. Osceola County Gillum volunteer Susan Wills said the secretary of state’s office had not yet released information about the provisionals early Thursday afternoon.
"The recounts will be nationally watched,” Florida Secretary of State Keb Detzner said to county supervisors of elections in a conference call, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “[We're] under a microscope.” Staff writers Anthony Man, Stephen Hobbs and Larry Barszewski contributed to this report. slemongello@o rlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920, @stevelemongello, facebook/stevelemongello