Cases mount as recount deadline looms
TALLAHASSEE — The timeline for Florida’s contentious recount was up in the air Wednesday as courts were flooded with lawsuits over how the count is being conducted and when it will end.
One suit led to Gov. Rick Scott’s attorney confirming that the governor will not participate in certifying elections results, while a new lawsuit from U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s campaign targeted a Panhandle elections official who accepted emailed and faxed ballots.
In another lawsuit brought by Nelson’s attorneys over Florida’s law requiring sig-
natures on mail-in ballots to match those on file with elections officials, Tallahassee U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker seemed exasperated at times with the seven cases and tight deadlines pending before his court.
“Basically what I am being asked to do this week is re-evaluate the entire elections code of the state of Florida,” Walker said during a five-hour hearing in the case.
Walker didn’t issue an immediate ruling, State officials said out of 47 counties reporting, there were 3,781 ballots rejected for mismatched signatures, including 467 in Orange County.
In another development, the Florida Department of State asked federal prosecutors to review altered forms given to voters in Broward and at least three other counties seeking to resolve issues with mail-in ballots.
The forms, which email exchanges indicated could be tied to the state Democratic Party, altered the date that they could be received from the actual deadline of Monday, Nov. 5, to the provisional ballot deadline of Thursday, Nov. 8. Despite the alterations, any affidavits received after Nov. 5 would not have been valid and the change would have only caused more voters to see their ballots rejected.
Nelson’s suit against Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen, who told reporters this week he accepted about 150 ballots via email and fax because of his interpretation of Scott’s post-Hurricane Michael order, claims Andersen refused to provide his campaign with copies of those ballots.
Faxed and emailed ballots are specifically prohibited both by state law and in a statement from Secretary of State Ken Detzner clarifying Scott’s order, which was meant to allow easier voting procedures in hurricane-ravaged areas.
Judge Walker warned lawyers to file briefings quickly and under compressed timelines. He needs to get orders out so any appeals can be made while still adhering to the deadlines under state law.
“There’s a lot of reasons why time is of the essence,” Walker said.
A lawsuit by the League of Women Voters led Scott’s attorney Dan Nordby to confirm Scott would recuse himself from the statewide elections canvassing commission to certify election results, just as he did in 2014 when he ran for re-election. Under state rules, an alternate can be appointed to certify the results in his stead.
Counties face a 3 p.m. deadline today to report results from the machine recounts in the U.S. Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner races. The unofficial results from the U.S. Senate and agriculture races were within
0.25 percent, the threshold to trigger a manual recount.
The results from the manual recounts are due by noon Sunday, and the state canvassing board is scheduled to certify the results of the election on Tuesday.
If those margins stand after the machine recount, county election officials are supposed to evaluate each overvote and undervote – votes not counted by the machines because a voter left a race blank or marked two options in one race – to determine voter intent. These typically involve voter errors like marking an “x” over an incorrect choice and then circling in their preferred choice or circling their choice rather than filling in the bubble.
One of the pending lawsuits in federal court by Nelson is over the Florida Department of State’s rules for reviewing those votes. He claims the rules allow some voter errors to be counted and not others.
On Capitol Hill, Scott appeared with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and five newly elected Republican senators to be introduced as the GOP “freshmen” in the next Congress. But Scott took no questions and did not respond when a reporter asked if he still believed fraud was happening in connection with the recount.
President Trump also continued to chime in, again claiming increasingly elaborate allegations of fraud without any evidence — this time by voters putting on “a different hat” to vote a second time. “When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles,” Trump said in an interview with the Daily Caller. “Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on.”