What you need to know about the Florida recounts

FAN Editor

Florida faces a 3 p.m. deadline Thursday to complete the machine recount of the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, while half a dozen lawsuits over the election are being waged in Tallahassee. Many counties have completed their machine recount, but heavily Democratic Broward County and Palm Beach County are still racing to meet the deadline. 

The elections will decide the Senate race between Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who currently holds a narrow lead, and incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, as well as the race for the state’s chief executive, in which GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis is ahead of Democrat Andrew Gillum.

Here’s a rundown on the latest developments.

The legal battles

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that voters whose mail-in or provisional ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match those on file will now have until Saturday at 5 p.m. to fix their ballots. Soon after the ruling, Scott appealed it.

In granting the preliminary injunction, Walker wrote that the issue “is whether Florida’s law that allows county election officials to reject vote-by-mail and provisional ballots for mismatched signatures—with no standards, an illusory process to cure, and no process to challenge the rejection— passes constitutional muster. The answer is simple. It does not.”

Democrats and Nelson argued that rejecting the ballots without standards for fixing them violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. They wanted all the voided ballots to be counted, a proposal rejected by Walker. 

The state of Florida argued that Nelson had waited too long to file the suit and that delaying the results would cause irreparable harm.

State officials said the matching requirement led to the voiding of nearly 4,000 ballots, although that figure did not include larger counties such as Miami-Dade, and it is smaller than the margin of about 13,000 votes separating Scott and Nelson. That’s a margin of 0.15 percent. Should that margin hold, there will be a hand recount, and the deadline for that is currently Sunday. It is not clear how or whether the court’s extension will affect Thursday’s deadline for the machine recount.

Broward County

Broward County finished its machine recount of early and mail-in ballots Wednesday, and workers began the recount of the Election Day ballots Wednesday afternoon. According to CBS News Miami, Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes says the workers are on track to complete the machine recount by the Thursday deadline.

Snipes has faced strong criticism for the way she handled the midterm elections, CBS News Miami reports. Facebook has confirmed that some people posted Snipes home address and phone number online.

The Florida secretary of state alleges voting irregularities occurred in four heavily Democratic counties, including Broward. 

Palm Beach County

In Palm Beach County, tallying machines overheated this week, causing mismatched results with the recount of 174,000 early voting ballots, forcing staffers to redo their work. According to the Miami Herald, Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher says the county will finish its recount of the Senate race by 3 p.m., but not the gubernatorial race.

Florida law is not entirely clear on what this will mean to the recount. It says that if this is the case, the canvassing board should submit the original initial returns with an explanation of why it couldn’t finish the recount on time. But the law also says the “canvassing board shall complete the recount.”

If there is no court decision extending the deadline, the gubernatorial race could be decided by the machine recount deadline, since DeSantis maintains his lead over Gillum by 0.41 percentage points. The race would not be certified until next week, however.

Four county supervisors turned over information that showed Democratic Party operatives changed official forms to say that voters had until two days after the election to fix any problems with mail-in ballot signatures. Under current law, a voter has until the day before Election Day to fix a problem.

Where it goes from here

Scott agreed to step down from the state panel responsible for certifying the final results. Scott has also suggested fraud may be taking place in some counties. Critics have said Scott should have no role in overseeing the election given his close contest.

The League of Women Voters of Florida and another group had filed a lawsuit that sought to remove Scott from any official control over the election. Scott appoints the state’s chief election official responsible for ordering recounts. Ballots, however, are counted by local election officials.

No less than six federal lawsuits have been filed so far in Tallahassee. Nelson’s campaign has also filed a lawsuit seeking public records from a north Florida elections supervisor who allowed voters in GOP-heavy Bay County to email their ballots in apparent violation of state law.

Judge Walker, citing a well-known “Star Trek” episode about rapidly-reproducing furry aliens, said during one election lawsuit hearing Wednesday that “I feel a little bit like Captain Kirk in the episode with the Tribbles where they start to multiply.” He began his third hearing of the day by correcting himself: “The lawyers are multiplying like Tribbles – not the lawsuits.”

Scott was in Washington, D.C., while the court battles rage on. He stood at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s left shoulder Wednesday when the Kentucky Republican welcomed GOP senators who will take their seats in January when the new Congress is sworn in.

State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. In the Senate race, Scott’s lead over Nelson was 0.14 percentage points. In the governor’s contest, unofficial results showed DeSantis ahead of Gillum by 0.41 percentage points.

Once the machine recount is complete, a hand recount will be ordered in any race where the difference is 0.25 percentage points or less, meaning it could take even longer to complete the review of the Senate race if the difference remains narrow.

If the Senate race does go to a hand recount, the deadline for counties to finish is Sunday.

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