Bitter battle for Senate seat goes to hand recount
Florida’s acrimonious battle for the U.S. Senate headed Thursday to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballotcounting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by less than 13,000 votes.
But the highly watched contest for governor between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum appeared to be over, with a machine recount showing DeSantis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race.
Gillum, who conceded the contest on election night only to retract his concession later, said in a state- ment that “It is not over until every legally casted vote is counted.”
The recount so far has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline.
“We gave a heroic effort,” said Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. If the county had three or four more hours, it would have made the deadline to recount ballots in the Senate race, she said.
Meanwhile, election officials in another urban county in the Tampa Bay area decided against turning in the results of their machine recount, which came up with 846 fewer votes than originally counted. Media in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes.
Counties were ordered this past weekend to do a machine recount of three statewide races because the margins were so tight. The next stage is a manual review of ballots that were not counted by machines to see if there is a way to figure out voter intent.
Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle.
The recount has trig- gered multiple lawsuits, many of them filed by Nelson and Democrats. The legal battles drew the ire of U. S. District Judge Mark Walker, who slammed the state for repeatedly failing to anticipate election problems.
He also said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000.
“We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this,” Walker said during a morning hearing.