Florida revisits election past with Senate, governor disputes
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. — Florida is once again at the center of election controversy, but this year there are no hanging chads or butterfly ballots like in 2000. And no angry mobs in suits at — least not yet.
The deeply purple state will learn Saturday whether there will be recounts in the bitter and tight U.S. Senate race between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and incum- bent 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, 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 County. He suggested something was awry because vote-counters 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 per- centage points when the first unofficial count is verified Saturday by Florida’s secretary of state. And if the margin is less than 0.25 percent the recount must be done by hand.
In Washington, Trump took Scott’s side, telling report- ers that the federal govern- ment could get involved and adding: “all of the sudden they are finding votes out of nowhere.”
“What’s going on in Florida is a disgrace,” he said.
Nelson filed his own federal lawsuit Friday, seeking to postpone the Saturday deadline to submit unofficial election results.
Scott’s campaign manager Jackie Schutz Zeckman shot back: “They aim to disenfranchise law-abiding Flor- ida voters by producing bal- lots out of thin air until they have enough to win.
The Broward County Can- vassing Board was to meet in the early afternoon, and about 30 Republican protesters had gathered outside by midday.
“Don’t steal our election!” they shouted in chants alternated with songs including “The Star Spangled Banner” and reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Broward County has a trou bled election history and its county’s election supervisor, Brenda Snipes, has been at the center of several controversies. Among other things, a 2016 lawsuit by Tim Canova, a challenger to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, sought to inspect physical ballots only to discover Snipes’ office had destroyed the originals but kept digital copies. Eventually a judge ruled that the law had been violated.
In Riviera Beach, the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board met Friday morning to review “anomalous” ballots not yet counted because of irregularities that prevented a machine-reading. Those included instances where a voter might have overvoted, trying to cross out a choice and indicating a preferred one with an arrow.
In the race for governor, DeSantis was leading by 0.47 percentage points. While that margin, if it holds, would require a recount, DeSantis has mostly stayed out of the fray, saying he was working on plans for taking office in January. Gillum, who had conceded Tuesday night before DeSantis’ margin narrowed, now says his campaign is preparing for a recount.