Recount under way as tensions escalate

The first election workers have begun the enormous task of recounting ballots in Florida’s bitterly close races for the US Senate and governor.

The move came after the secretary of state ordered a review of the two nationally watched contests.

Miami-dade County election officials began feeding ballots into scanning machines on Saturday evening. The tedious work in that one South Florida county alone could take days, considering some 800,000 ballots were cast.

The Florida secretary of state ordered the recounts on Saturday, an unprecedented step for the two flagship races in a state that took five weeks to decide the 2000 presidential election.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office said it was unaware of any other time either a race for governor or US Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.

Florida’s 67 counties can decide when to begin their recounts, but must complete them by Thursday.

Elections officials in two large counties in the Tampa Bay area – Pinellas and Hillsborough – said they would begin recounts yesterday.

Unofficial results show that Republican Ron Desantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum by less than 0.5 percentage points, which will require a machine recount of ballots.