Insults, lawsuits pile up as recount begins
Tallying of 700,000 votes began after three-hour delay
LAUDERHILL — The statewide election recount in Florida is underway, with vote counting in Broward County starting Sunday morning in a room packed with attorneys, TV cameras and no shortage of tension.
Three of the state’s biggest races — governor, U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner — are close enough to require a recount.
The recount of 700,000 votes in Broward, Florida’s second most populous county, began on Sunday after a three-hour delay
caused by a machine that wasn’t registering all ballots when it was tested.
Republican representatives asked that all machines be retested and county officials agreed.
In Palm Beach County, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Sunday she doesn’t believe her department will be able to meet the state’s Thursday deadline to complete the recount.
Gov. and Republican Senate nominee Rick Scott’s campaign filed complaints Sunday against Snipes and Bucher requesting that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the county Sheriff’s Offices be required to impound and secure all equipment and ballots when they are not in use until the recount is over.
“It’s disappointing and unfortunate and desperate of the governor,” Florida Democratic Party lawyer Mitchell Berger said Sunday afternoon outside the Broward elections office.
Bill Scherer, Scott’s attorney, had a front-row seat before Broward County’s canvassing board Sunday morning while election crews calibrated the machines to make sure they were in functioning order.
Late Thursday, Scott’s Senate campaign filed a lawsuit in Broward Circuit Court against Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes accusing her of withholding too much information and demanding she reveal how many ballots were left to count.
“The Democrats are challenging the calibration of the machines,” Scherer
told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Sunday. “They are saying it was a machine glitch” to explain the under votes in the U.S. Senate.
In Broward, nearly 25,000 more people voted in the governor’s race than the U.S. Senate race. Some say voters mistakenly overlooked it because of the way the Broward ballot was designed, with the Senate race in the left-hand column below the instructions.
“Their only hope of overturning this election is claiming there was a machine malfunction,” Scherer said of Democratic leaders. “Those ballots are blank and there’s not a god damn thing they can do about it.”
Scherer says he too thinks some Broward voters overlooked the Senate race because of the poor design of the ballot.
“The ballot was laid out in an incompetent fashion by the incompetent supervisor of elections,” he said.
Scherer said even his own wife didn’t notice the Senate race on the ballot. He had to point it out to her when they were filling out their mail-in ballots.
“My wife did not see it on the ballot,” he said. “I told her to look again, it’s the first thing on the ballot.”
Berger fired back on Sunday.
“Before we even started the process, the Republicans chose to sue Brenda Snipes,” he said outside the room where the recount was underway. “I don’t know why anyone would want to create chaos right now.”
Berger defended Snipes and her staff, noting they were already under intense pressure and trying to do a difficult job in a difficult situation.
Cynthia Busch, chairwoman of the Broward Democratic Party, also took up for Snipes on Sunday, saying people were being too hard on her.
“There’s a narrative the other side wants to create about what’s going on here that’s just not true,” she said.
As the recount unfolded, Republicans urged their Democratic opponents to give up and allow the state to move on. Scott said Sunday that incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by noncitizens to count, pointing to a Nelson lawyer objecting to Palm Beach County’s rejection of one provisional ballot because it was cast by a noncitizen.
“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.”
Nelson’s campaign issued a statement Sunday saying their lawyer wasn’t authorized to object to the ballot’s rejection as “Noncitizens cannot vote in US elections.”
Democratic governor nominee Andrew Gillum and Nelson have argued each vote should be counted and the process allowed to take its course. Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and FDLE have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud.
“These are legal votes that have been cast, and we are right now in court fighting to have those votes counted … We believe that those ballots too ought to be counted here in the state of Florida,” Gillum said at a Fort Lauderdale church Sunday night.
Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi sent letters Sunday to FDLE and the state elections chief urging them to be vigilant for any violations in Broward and Palm Beach counties. She also urged FDLE to investigate Scott’s claims of fraud.
That didn’t stop protests outside Snipes’ office, where a crowd of mostly Republicans gathered Sunday, holding signs, listening to country music and occasionally chanting “lock her up,” referring to Snipes.
A massive Trump 2020 flag flew over the parking lot and many members of a Bikers For Trump group wore matching shirts and carried flags, mingling among a crowd that included a protester wearing a Hillary Clinton mask.
Registered independent Russell Liddick, a 38-year-old retail worker from Pompano Beach carried a sign reading, “I’m not here for Trump! I’m here for fair elections! Fire Snipes!” He said the office’s problems “don’t make me feel very much like my vote counted.”
Larry Davis, an attorney for Democratic nominee for agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried, predicted it will take at least three days to complete the machine recount even with staff working around the clock.
“They are predicting it will take 85 hours,” Davis said. “We are going to be here until all the ballots come through the machine. It’s going to be morning, noon and night.”
Elections staff have more than 3.5 million pages to sort before they can start the actual recount — a task estimated to take up to 35 hours, said Joseph D’Alessandro, director of election planning and development.
Out of Broward’s 714,000 votes, 299,000 ballots were cast in early voting; 226,000 were cast on Election Day; and 189,000 were mail-in ballots, D’Alessandro said.
Here is what each of the recount races were looking like as of Sunday:
■ In the race for U.S. Senate, Scott holds a 12,562-vote lead over Nelson. Scott received 50.07 percent of the vote compared with Nelson’s 49.92 percent, a difference of 0.15 percentage points.
■ In the race for governor, Republican nominee Ron DeSantis has a 33,684-vote advantage over Democratic nominee Gillum. DeSantis received 49.59 percent of the vote compared with Gillum’s 49.18 percent, a difference of 0.41 percentage points. Gillum withdrew his concession Saturday and called for all votes to be counted.
■ In the race for agriculture commissioner, Democratic nominee Fried has a 5,326-vote lead over Republican Matt Caldwell. Fried received 50.03 percent of the vote compared with Caldwell’s 49.97 percent, a difference of 0.06 percentage points.
Florida requires machine recounts to be conducted in races that finish with less than a half-percentage point margin.
Palm Beach and MiamiDade counties started their recounts Saturday evening. Some other counties, including Orange, won’t start until Monday. All county elections officials have until 3 p.m. Thursday to complete the machine recounts.
About 8.2 million total votes were cast in the statewide election.
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.
Information from Sun Sentinel staff writer Aric Chokey and The Associated Press was used in this report.