Florida recount disputes ongoing

The first round of recount results are due Thursday in Florida, but the final outcome of the elections in the state for U.S. Senate and governor might still be days away. All counties had to do a machine recount of ballots in those races—and that of the commissioner of agriculture—because the margin between candidates was less than .5 percentage points. If the margin is lower than .25 points after the machine recount, then counties must tally ballots by hand.

At least one jurisdiction, Palm Beach County, said it might not finish the machine recount by Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline. A federal judge is considering what to do about that and numerous other problems brought up in a slew of lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday morning that voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected because of mismatched signatures could have until 5 p.m. Saturday to prove their identities to election officials. In court Thursday, Walker expressed his frustration that Florida had not come up with better vote counting procedures, especially after the recount debacle in the 2000 presidential election. “We have been the laughing stock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this,” he said in court.

Republican Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Andrew Gillum by .41 points in the governor’s race, while in the Senate race, Republican Rick Scott, the state’s outgoing governor, is leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by just .15 points. Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to change the rules of the election to make the vote count go their way, while Democrats say Republicans are disenfranchising voters by leaving ballots uncounted.