Florida’s recount deadline is fast approaching.
Florida, America’s most notorious swing state, is in a mad dash to recount ballots in the Senate and governor’s races, with the first deadline at 3 pm Thursday. Republicans are narrowly leading and are fighting in court to end the process quickly.
The races between Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson for US Senate and between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum for governor remained too close to call after the November 6 election. By the end of the first count, Scott only held a 0.14 percent margin of victory, and DeSantis had a slightly larger 0.41 percent lead. The race for the state’s agricultural commissioner is also undergoing a recount.
Under Florida state law, a machine recount is triggered if the margin of victory is equal to or less than 0.5 percent, while a manual recount is triggered if it’s less than 0.25 percent.
The machine recount is due at 3 pm on Thursday, but if the new margin is less than 0.25 percent, a manual recount will begin. Manual recounts are due at noon on Sunday, November 18. If counties cannot meet those deadlines, the state will adopt the first round of tallies, which was submitted last Saturday.
All eyes are on Palm Beach and Broward counties, two Democratic strongholds that put Nelson and Gillum’s races in recount territory. Palm Beach County, the state’s third largest, which early on had expressed concern that it would be unable to meet the state-imposed machine recount deadline, faced even more trouble this week when some of its decades-old machines overheated and miscounted more than 170,000 ballots. The machines are up and running again, but it’s still not clear the county will make the deadline.
Meanwhile, Nelson’s campaign is confident that these recounts will change the final results.
“At the end of this process, Sen. Nelson is going to prevail,” Marc Elias, Nelson’s campaign lawyer, said last week on a press call. “I am very measured in how I treat what I say. When I say it is currently a jump ball… I mean that.”
Gillum had already conceded to DeSantis, but withdrew his concession Saturday, hours after Florida’s secretary of state announced that the gubernatorial election would go to a recount as well. At any rate, a concession speech isn’t legally binding.
The stakes for both outcomes are high, given strikingly contrasting visions for the state and the country — and given that Republicans have a bare 51-majority in the Senate (one they would expand if Scott wins). Whatever happens in Florida could have huge national consequences.
Elections in Florida are almost always very close. And this year, even in a midterm cycle, is no different.
While the early results seemed to favor Democrats, Republicans, like in 2016, showed their might by the end of election night and gained a very narrow lead. But not all the votes had been counted, and as the end of the week drew near, Nelson and Gillum saw their vote totals grow as more votes came in from the populous southeastern parts of the state.
In Broward County, the second-most-populous county in southeastern Florida that covers part of the Miami metropolitan area, Nelson won 69 percent of the votes and Gillum won 68 percent, each contributing more than 400,000 votes to their total tallies. Those statewide totals have only grown as more absentee, early, and Election Day provisional votes were counted, and could change more during the recounts.
In Florida, if the margin of victory is 0.5 percent or less, a machine recount is ordered. If that margin is 0.25 percent or less, the state will trigger a manual recount, where the “over votes” and “under votes” are counted by hand.
This matters, particularly in the Senate race. For example, in Broward County, of the 714,859 people who turned in ballots, only 682,453 voted in the Senate race, according to the current count — less than almost every other statewide race on the ballot. Broward County is a Democratic stronghold in Florida.
Why there have been so many “under votes” in Broward County remains a mystery. Some have said it’s because of how the ballot is formatted, putting the Senate race on the bottom of the page under a long block of voting instructions. But Nelson’s lawyer thinks it’s a machine error that would be rectified with a hand recount.
A recount also means that provisional and overseas absentee ballots — all of which are typically counted after Election Day — are counted, a process that can at times take more than a week. This is where the process gets tricky.
There are always mail-in ballots and provisional ballots that aren’t counted — due to a lack of ID or matching address — that can be counted if they are rechecked. Typically, voters are notified of errors and have to sign an affidavit “curing” the mistakes before Election Day. But there are always ballots turned in on Election Day, as well as provisional ballots, that can’t be re-checked.
According to Daniel Smith, a political scientist with the University of Florida and an election watcher, of the mail ballots returned on Election Day, more than 13,000 had issues.
Originally, voters had until last Thursday to make sure their vote counted, or “cure” their votes of any errors, before county supervisors had to submit their first tallies on November 10. But on Thursday, a Florida judge sided with Democrats, ruling that voters have until 5 pm on Saturday, November 17, to address problems with their ballots — which could affect thousands of votes.
The close races have fueled partisan attacks. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Scott, are claiming — without evidence — that voter fraud is responsible for Democrats’ growing vote tallies. Scott even went so far as to request that the state investigate; one day later, Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement said it had received “no allegations of criminal activity.”
Trump continued to cast doubt on the legally mandated recount process, tweeting from Paris that he was “watching closely” because Democrats were trying to “STEAL two big elections in Florida.”
On Monday, Trump argued that the state should restrict the number of ballots counted to just those from Election Day, which would discount the votes of thousands of Floridians, including overseas military voters.
Democrats are prepared for the long haul — even Gillum, who gave a teary concession speech on election night . “We are committed to ensuring every single vote in Florida is counted,” his campaign has since said .
And Nelson has taken the fight to the courts, suing to make sure that counties have enough time to count the ballots, and are counting as many ballots as possible. Because provisional ballots overwhelmingly favor Democrats, it’s in Nelson’s interest to make sure as many ballots are counted as possible.
In response, Scott, the current governor, has argued that fewer ballots should be counted.
