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TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Chaotic images taken from Florida's election story last week – Washington's brigade of lawyers, the collapse of defeat in Broward County, vitriolic accusations and counter-charges – have caused flashbacks among the electorate of the 2000 presidential election.
Yet, for fighters from both parties competing for incredibly tight races between the governor and the senate, the 2018 election was less about revisiting the political trauma of the past than setting the stage for the campaign. The Republicans and Democrats said the legal and political skirmishes in that state posed a real danger to the messages and tactics of fraud and vote theft that threaten to further undermine confidence in the electoral system.
Florida emerged from mid-2018 with a solid reputation as the country's most competitive battleground, a state whose political culture best fits the radical political style of its adoptive son, President Trump, with candidates focused on the dynamism of voters with a visceral feeling, sometimes too excessive. the top, the messages.
This approach is "not a good long-term strategy for the party or for the country," said Carlos Curbelo, representative of the Miami area, one of two members of the Republican House in Florida who had lost their seat for the benefit of the Democrats.
"Many Republicans are happy because we had successful candidates all over the place, but these races were very very tight and we also lost some races, especially in South Florida," said Mr. Curbelo, 38, who resisted his party by taking positions on environmental issues and immigration. "With regard to 2020, I really fear that the situation worsens before it improves."
It was only this weekend, nearly two weeks after the election, that the two largest Florida races were determined, with Senator Bill Nelson, outgoing president of the Democratic Party, giving in to Republican Governor Rick Scott on Sunday, and Andrew Gillum conceding the governor's race to his title of G.O.P. rival, Ron DeSantis, the day before.
In the meantime, the Democrats have filed numerous lawsuits to challenge the ballot counting process in the Senate race – though Nelson's chances of overtaking Scott are still quite low – while Republicans have launched unfounded accusations of voter fraud among Democrats. The quarrels have put even more emphasis on an American electoral system that is subject to human and mechanical errors.
This acrimony in Florida followed a controversial battle over several weeks over the crackdown on voters in Georgia, where the Republican Secretary of State was overseeing the governor's race, in which he also participated. These battles could foreshadow what 2020 will look like in other closely contested states, particularly those with increasingly diverse populations and where conservative-dominated legislatures have attempted to impose more restrictions on vote while stoking paranoia after stolen elections.
"If what happens is transposed to a presidential election, our system would be taxed much more heavily than it did in 2000," said Edward Foley, an Electoral Law Professor at Ohio State University. eminent scholars on recounts. "Even though there had been fighting in 2000, the rhetoric was not as caustic as what we saw in Florida this year: allegations of theft and rigging."
Some long-standing battlegrounds, such as Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri, have mostly switched to Republicans. Others, especially the Upper Midwest states, are more elastic and change party depending on the political climate; this year the Democrats have made significant gains there.
Florida, on the other hand, remains stuck in a sharp and partisan trench war with some last-minute indecisive voters open to persuasion, which encourages the use of more and more powerful political artillery during the campaign and fierce battles around the counting of votes after the election.
This situation was exacerbated this year by Scott's extremely thin margins, which beat Mr. Nelson by only 10,033 votes, or 0.12%, and Mr. DeSantis, who defeated Mr. Gillum by 34,000 voice.
As the recount recounted, Scott urged Trump to release explosive tweets to force Nelson to concede, Republicans said.
"In many other states, including Texas, we are witnessing a big cross-poll, but in Florida, it's all about intensity, so it's essentially a fight, all the time." said Jeff Roe, who collaborated on an independent spending campaign. DeSantis is running for governor.
"Everyone just tied his shirt up, he tightened his chin and he just superimposed," he said. "It will be even more intense next time because it is actually the country of Donald Trump and all he has in Florida."
The growing tone – evident in Mr. Scott's accusations of widespread fraud at the polls; the republican senator of the state, Marco Rubio; and President Trump himself – has created a leeway for politicians to act in a justified way, political strategists and historians explain.
Trump, who made baseless claims of electoral fraud after Hillary Clinton overtook him in the 2016 popular vote, led the way in denigrating Florida procedures. He tweeted that a "large number of new ballots have arrived from nowhere" and that an "honest count of votes is no longer possible – massively infected ballots".
Trump also said last week that Florida was dressing up to vote several times. "Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on another sweater, come in and vote again," said the president. He offered no other support to his account than to say that he had heard "friends talk about it"; whether it was serious or just malicious, it was intended to further tarnish the legitimacy of the vote.
Al Cardenas, who served in Florida's Republican Party during former governor Jeb Bush's tenure, said he was particularly impressed by Rubio's willingness to participate fully in the fight for counting. In the days following the race, Rubio said the Democrats were sending lawyers to Florida to "steal" the elections.
"I did not remember that Marco used that tone before, I do not know what triggered it," Cardenas said. "He was calm enough for the elections, but he has now pushed his rhetoric to seventh."
Mr. Rubio's tone died down on Sunday. he rented Mr. Nelson on Twitter for sitting in the Senate "with a decency and dignity increasingly rare in politics".
It is also striking to see how aggressive the Democrats have been in Florida and other extremely close-knit states. National Democratic Party figures such as Hillary Clinton and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, a likely candidate for 2020, helped the party solicit money for the legal battle in Florida.
A number of Democrats have also begun to question the legitimacy of the electoral process much more harshly. In addition to raising the usual questions about the suppression of voters and the sinister motives of G.O.P. legislators, the Democrats are returning the scenario and using Republican tactics against them.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio made the same statement, but in a more crude way. "If Stacey Abrams does not win in Georgia, they stole her. It's clear. It's clear, "he said. He also accused the Republicans of rigging the elections because "we are more numerous than there are". He suggested that the purge of Mr. Kemp's voters list was intended to increase his chances of winning.
While MM. Nelson and Gillum ended their campaigns this weekend, the Democrats began to regroup and evaluate the lessons learned – and began to worry, again, that they had not failed to match the intensity of the Republicans.
While most democratic campaigns have nearly achieved their participation goals, more motivated Republicans have done better, narrowly dominating both renowned races despite 257,000 fewer registered voters across the state.
The Democrats hope that this dynamic will change in 2020, thanks to the adoption of a referendum throughout the state reinstating the right to vote to about 1.4 million people convicted of crime. But they are haunted by the specter of past defeats.
During the 2000 recount, Al Gore was criticized for not having fought with the same tough tactics as Republicans, who used an aggressive political and public relations component to accompany their legal efforts.
But not all Democrats believe that borrowing Republican rhetoric is a wise strategy.
"It's not constructive at all, and it's just appealing to our base," said Ed Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, who advised Gore's campaign in 2000. "It destroys the process."
Other Democrats insist that they simply adapt to the new reality.
"In a better world, when they go low, we go high," said Philippe Reines, chairman of the Democratic National Committee at the 2000 recount, a longtime advisor to Mrs. Clinton. "In the world we live in, it's no, we do not give up that seat without fighting."
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