Florida counties racing to beat recount 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 ongoing 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 l arger Democratic strongholds are still racing to meet the deadline.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott 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, who has already lashed out over the recount, added to the growing partisan firestorm by arguing without evidence that some people unlawfully participated in the election by dressing in dis- guise.
“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 published Wednesday. “Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.”
The state elections department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, both run by GOP appointees, have said they haven’t seen any evidence of voter fraud of this sort.
Meanwhile, problems continue to arise in Palm Beach County, where tallying machines have overheated. That’s caused mismatched results with the recount of 174,000 early voting ballots, forcing workers to go back and redo their work with no time to spare.
“The machines are old,” said Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher, who said they underwent maintenance right before the election.
Right now, Palm Beach County looks like it could miss the Thursday deadline, even though Nelson and Democrats filed lawsuits seeking to suspend it.
Lawyers for Democrats also asked a federal judge Wednesday to set aside the state law mandating that mailed-in votes be thrown out if the signature on the envelope doesn’t match the signature on file.
No less than six federal lawsuits have been filed in Tallahassee.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, citing a “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.”
State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage point. In the Senate race, Scott’s lead over Nelson was 0.14 percentage points. In the governor’s contest, results showed Ron DeSantis ahead of Andrew Gillum by 0.41 percentage point.
Once the machine recount is complete, a hand recount will be ordered in any race where the difference is 0.25 percentage point or less.
If the Senate race does go to a hand recount, the deadline is Sunday.