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Democrat Andrew Gillum acknowledged his fierce run for the Florida governor on Saturday and congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis on his appointment as the new state director general.
Gillum, the outgoing mayor of Tallahassee, did not say Saturday in a live video on Facebook what he planned to do next.
"Stay tuned," he said, adding that he would remain politically active and fight for reforms on how Florida ran its elections.
"We know that this fight continues. More than 4 million of you have decided that you want a different direction for the state of Florida, "he said, with his wife, R. Jai Gillum, by his side in the video. "We want you to know that we see you; that we heard you. "
DeSantis responded to Gillum in a Twitter post by writing, "It was a hard-fought campaign. It is now time to reunite Florida. "
His campaign said his tweet would be his statement.
Gillum conceded to DeSantis on the evening of the election, but retracted it after the margin between the two candidates had narrowed. The race was submitted to a mandatory recount, but after a first automatic recount, DeSantis has always led Gillum to more than 30,000 votes.
In the video, Gillum said that he had decided to stay in the race because he wanted to "make sure every vote was counted".
Gillum experienced a dramatic rise and fall in 2018 after being in the polls during the Democratic primary race to stun favorite Gwen Graham in August. He then led DeSantis in almost every election until after the general election. DeSantis' victory marks 20 years of Republican control of the governor's office.
The low margin this time – only 0.41 percentage point – triggered an automatic recount which reported to Gillum that one vote out of the 8.2 million votes cast when it was completed on Thursday although several counties, including Broward and Palm Beach, did not report their numbers in time.
Gillum's announcement came as most of Florida's counties finished telling their story in the controversial US Senate race.
The few results released on Saturday showed that US Democrat Senator Bill Nelson garnered only a few hundred votes in his fierce fight with incumbent Governor Rick Scott, a Republican.
The tighter races between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell for Nelson and Scott and for the Commissioner of Agriculture, with margins of less than 0.25 points, were manually recounted.
On Saturday, Broward County's most senior election official publicly acknowledged that his office had misplaced more than 2,000 ballots.
Electoral Supervisor Brenda Snipes said 2,040 ballots had been "misclassified".
"The ballots are in the building," says Snipes to the solicitors who are responsible for the hand-counting.
Gillum's announcement came hours after President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Gillum will be a "strong Democratic warrior" and a "force to be reckoned with."
He also arrived a few minutes after 17 hours. The Saturday deadline for voters whose ballot papers had been rejected for signature issues has been corrected with the county election offices.
Orange County Democrat President Wes Hodge said the state was violating the order of a judge by adding a last-minute hurdle for these voters.
US District Judge Mark Walker said on Wednesday that voters whose ballot papers had been rejected because of mismatched signatures now had up to 17 hours. Saturday, to "fix" their votes by sending a signed affidavit and a copy of their IDs to their county election supervisors.
Copies of affidavits are available at all county election offices and on the website.
But after contacting over 300 people who had the chance to heal their ballots and handed out 76 affidavit forms, Hodge said Saturday that Orange election officials told him that the forms could not to be accepted. The reason, he said, is that Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered county election officials to use only the newly drafted affidavit form, which was only available on Friday afternoon.
"This new form, created with less than 16 hours left over from a 48-hour extension, was clearly aimed at preventing voters from making their voices heard," Hodge said.
Hodge asserted that the creation of the new form directly violated Walker's decision that the ballots could be treated "in the same manner and with the same evidence" as before the initial 17:00 deadline. . November 5, the day before polling day.
"This directly undermines the integrity of the electoral process and creates doubts in the minds of voters for the next election cycle," Hodge said in a statement. "The order of Federal Judge Mark Walker directly pointed out that these political games should NOT take place and that the voices of voters should be heard. … This type of repression does not have its place in Florida and the games must stop immediately. "
A Democratic volunteer, Chuck Dent, said that a severely disabled woman was having a hard time signing and voting.
"It's twice now that she did that," he said of his vote and the initial affidavit she sent. "And now, this."
Bill Cowles, election supervisor in Orange County, and the State Department could not be contacted for comments.
The deadline for counties to manually recount 93,000 over-voting and under-voting in the US senatorial elections, in which Nelson was coaching Scott with fewer than 13,000 votes, is set for noon Sunday.
Associated Press contributed to this report. [email protected], 407-418-5920, @stevelemongello, facebook / stevelemongello
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