Recounts possible in races for Senate, governor
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida is once again at the center of election controversy.
The deeply purple state will learn Saturday whether recounts will be held in the bitter U. S. Senate race between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson; and in the governor’s race between former Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis and the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum.
The state’s recount procedures have been revised since Florida held the country hostage for a month 18 years ago, when George W. Bush edged Al Gore for the presidency. Among other things, the infamous punch- card ballots are no longer.
Yet, Scott and President Donald Trump on Friday alleged fraud without evidence, even as the often- laborious process of reviewing ballots in a close race continued ahead of the Saturday noon deadline. Both Scott and Nelson sought to get the courts to intervene.
Scott said “unethical liberals” were trying to steal the election in Democratic strongholds of Broward and Palm Beach counties. He suggested something was awry because votecounters were taking longer there than in other jurisdictions, and his thin lead has kept narrowing since election night.
On Friday, he led by 0.21 percentage point, low enough to require a recount.
A recount is mandatory if the winning candidate’s margin is less than 0.5 percentage points when the first unofficial count is verified Saturday by Florida’s secretary of state. If the margin is less than 0.25 percent, the recount must be done by hand.
The governor filed lawsuits in both counties seeking more information on how their ballots were being tallied. A judge Elections officials in Riviera Beach, Fla., examine provisional ballots from Tuesday’s election. Friday sided with Scott and ordered Broward County’s election supervisor to release the voter information sought by the governor by 7 p.m.
Nelson filed his own federal lawsuit Friday, seeking to postpone the Saturday deadline to submit unofficial election results. “Clearly, Rick Scott is trying to stop all the votes from being counted and he’s impeding the democratic process,” Nelson said.
The Broward Canvassing Board met Friday to review ballots that had been initially deemed ineligible. Lawyers from the campaigns, journalists and citizens crowded into a room to observe.
In the undecided race for governor, DeSantis was leading by 0.47 percentage points. That margin, if it holds, would require a recount. Gillum conceded on election night, but now says he wants to see every vote counted, strongly indicating he would not stand in the way of a recount.
In other post- election developments:
• Arizona Republicans who had alleged the state’s
two biggest counties were illegally counting some ballots changed course Friday and agreed to settle their lawsuit if rural voters also get an extra chance to fix problems with ballots cast in the state’s tight U. S. Senate race.
The settlement was technically between Republicans and the state’s county recorders, but Democrats and civil rights groups agreed to it. Arizona’s 15 counties now have until Nov. 14 to address the issue, which state Elections Director Eric Spencer said likely affects less than 10,000 votes out of more than 2.3 million cast statewide.
The Republican lawsuit said the state’s county recorders don’t follow a uniform standard for allowing voters to address problems with the signatures on their mail- in ballots. The lawsuit settlement came in a courtroom packed with more than a dozen lawyers and a day after Democrat Kyrsten Sinema jumped into a slight lead over Republican Martha McSally.
President Donald Trump seemed to attack the way Maricopa and Pima
operated on Twitter. “In Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH,” Trump tweeted. “Electoral corruption — Call for a new Election?”
Arizona is notoriously slow at tallying ballots. About 75 percent of votes are cast by mail, but each ballot must go through a laborious verification process.
• In Atlanta, volunteers spread out Friday trying to find any ballots that could help Democrat Stacey Abrams close the gap against Republican Brian Kemp in their unsettled, too- close- to- call race for Georgia governor.
Unofficial returns show Kemp with an advantage, yet Abrams, who hopes to become the nation’s first black woman governor, sent out volunteers and campaign staff in search of votes.
Dozens of volunteers converged on a warehouseturned-phone bank near downtown. The goal: reach voters who used a provisional ballot to make sure they take steps to ensure their vote — for Abrams or Kemp — was counted by Friday evening, the deadline.