Florida finds itself again at center of voting furor
Races for Senate, governor to yield likely recounts
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 recounts will be held in the bitter, tight 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 punchcard 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 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 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.
Although the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said no allegations of fraud had been made, Scott asked — but did not order — the agency to investigate the counties’ elections departments. A spokeswoman for the agency said there were no credible allegations of fraud; therefore, no active investigation.
The governor, meanwhile, filed lawsuits in both counties seeking more information on how their ballots were being tallied. Nelson filed his own federal lawsuit Friday, seeking to postpone the Saturday deadline to submit unofficial election results.
A judge Friday sided with Scott and ordered Broward County’s election supervisor to release the voter information sought by the governor by 7 p.m.
The ruling came as the Broward Canvassing Board met to review ballots that had been initially deemed ineligible. The county has not answered questions about its process and how many votes it has left to count.
In the undecided race for governor, DeSantis was leading by 0.47 percentage points. That margin, if it holds, would require a recount, but DeSantis has mostly stayed out of the fray, saying he was working on plans for taking office in January. A third statewide race that could go to a recount — the agriculture commissioner race between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell — is the tightest of all, with Fried holding a 483-vote lead — a margin of 0.006 percent.
In 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 lawsuit settlement came a day after Democrat Kyrsten Sinema jumped into a slight lead over Republican Martha McSally in the midst of the slow vote count. On Friday night, she padded her lead to about 1 percentage point of the 2 million ballots tallied. More than 350,000 remain accounted.