Messy recount faces deadline
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — With time running out, Florida’s election recount drama lurched forward Wednesday amid a maelstrom of courtroom arguments, broken machines, allegations of irregularities and President Donald Trump’s criticism.
Many counties have wrapped up their machine recount ahead of a Thursday deadline to complete reviews of the U.S. Senate and governor races, but larger Democratic strongholds were still racing to meet the deadline.
In a key court battle related to the recount, a federal judge said he was unlikely to order election officials to automatically count thousands of mail-in ballots that were rejected because the signatures on the ballots did not match signatures on file. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, however, did say he was open to giving voters extra time to fix their ballots.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott also agreed to step down from the state panel responsible for certifying the final results. Scott is locked in a tight race with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and has already suggested fraud may be taking place in some counties.
Trump added to the growing partisan firestorm by arguing without evidence that some people unlawfully participated in the election by dressing in disguise.
“Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again,” Trump said in an interview with The Daily Caller published Wednesday.
The state elections department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, both run by Republican appointees, have said they haven’t seen any evidence of voter fraud of this sort.
Meanwhile, problems continued in Palm Beach County, where tallying machines overheated. That caused mismatched results with the recount of 174,000 early voting ballots, forcing workers to go back and redo their work.
Right now, Palm Beach County looks like it could miss the Thursday deadline, even though Nelson and Democrats filed lawsuits seeking to suspend it.
No less than six federal lawsuits have been filed so far in Tallahassee. Walker, citing a well-known “Star Trek” episode, said during a hearing Wednesday that “I feel a little bit like Captain Kirk in the episode with the Tribbles where they start to multiply.”
Lawyers for Republicans and Democrats spent hours in front of the judge arguing over Florida’s law that requires signatures on mail-in and provisional ballots to match signatures on file in local election offices. Democratic attorneys contend that election officials aren’t handwriting experts and should not be allowed to disqualify ballots.