Recount in the Senate, Governor's Races

Ballot counting began in Broward and Palm Beach counties, two Democratic strongholds, after thin margins prompted Florida's secretary of state to order a recount on Saturday.

In the Senate race, rival Republican, Gov. Rick Scott, won just before midnight on Tuesday, but outgoing President Democrat Bill Nelson never conceded the race. Voting totals on the Florida Division of Elections website show that Scott had 50.07% of the vote count, or 49.92% for Nelson.

Scott has accused election officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties of "widespread fraud" and has asked Florida's law enforcement department to investigate.

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Republican candidate Ron DeSantis leads the mayor of Tallahbadee, Andrew Gillum, to less than 34,000 votes, a margin of 0.41 percent, according to the Florida Elections Division .

One day after withdrawing his concession in the race to the Florida governor Saturday, Gillum will surrender to the nil account for a total count of votes.

On Sunday morning, Gillum and her family were attending a church service in Tallahbadee, where the congregation was decorated with blue and white and where Gillum's campaign paraphernalia would honor her years of public service.

He will then travel south of Fort Lauderdale in Broward County for "a religious event counting every vote" at the New Mount Olive Baptist Church tonight.

In the other big race for agriculture commissioner, Democrat Nikki Fried has widened her margin from 51.30% to 48.70% for Republican Matt Caldwell.

Counting is underway at the Office of the Election Supervisor, Leslie Swan, and so far, navigation has been fluid.

Beginning at approximately 8:15 am, Swan office officials began manually feeding approximately 77,000 ballots into two new electronic DS 200 devices that calculate votes at advance polls, polling day and by mail. About three hours later, about one-third of the ballots were read, Swan said.

"Our system works perfectly," said Swan. "It's hard to say how long this process will take, because we've never used this equipment before, but it's certainly faster than we could have done with our old equipment."

The recount began in Palm Beach County on Saturday night around 5pm.

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Election workers spent small piles of ballots in four machines Sunday morning. A dozen workers sitting at nearby tables duplicated damaged ballots that could not be processed by the machines.

Susan Bucher, Election Supervisor, and August Bonavita, 15th Circuit Judge, both members of the County Solicitation Council, reviewed the ballots labeled "sub-votes" and "over-votes" under the supervision of lawyers, journalists and members of the public.

An under-vote occurs when no candidate is selected in a particular race, while an over-vote occurs when too many choices have been selected.

Irwin Jacobowitz, third member of the solicitation council, joined us around 11 am to give Bonavita a break.

The office of the Broward County Election Supervisor reached its maximum capacity by 7 am, at which time the counting of the votes was to begin. The outside area was full of press teams and lawyers wanting to get inside. Many police forces were monitoring the area.

It was raining intermittently as a small contingent of protesters with the Trump, DeSantis and Scott signs huddled together, but did not sing and did not cause any disruption.

Broward County was expected to start counting about 700,000 ballots Sunday morning, but one tested machine did not register all ballots. Republican officials demanded that all machines be tested again and county officials agreed.

Groups of journalists gathered in front of the Broward County Supervisor's doors at the Election Office in Lauderhill, Florida. Small groups of reporters were allowed inside the building until it was ordered to no longer allow the journalists because the building had reached its maximum capacity. The others were ordered to wait outside.

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Four hours after the scheduled start of counting, the Broward County Ballot Counters were calibrated and the workers started counting the ballots.

When reporters appeared Sunday morning to the supervisor of the St. Lucia County Elections Office, hoping to observe the count, no one was present except for a member of the Sheriff County of St. Lucia.

The substitute, said the election supervisor, Gertrude Walker, told her that the recount was deferred and that it would begin at 7 am on Monday.

An expert called to calibrate the counting machine before the start of counting could not have arrived in time due to a delayed flight, said the MP.

Unofficial totals of the county's votes were compiled Tuesday night, 314 additional ballots were counted, most of them apparently from Democrats.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Ana Ceballos, Naples Daily News; Joel Shannon, USA TODAY & # 39; HUI

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