[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered the mornings of the week.
/ Update
By Alex Seitz-Wald and Jonathan Allen
RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. – A hand-held recount in the Florida Senate race was ordered Thursday by the Secretary of State after Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, slightly increased his lead over Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in an automatic recount .
Scott is leading Nelson with 12,603 votes, or about 0.15%, which is less than the 0.25% margin he would have needed to avoid a manual recount. But there will be no manual recount of the governor's race, in which the Republican Ron DeSantis is ahead of 34,000 votes – or 41% – after the total countdown of the machines.
Under this order, Florida counties have until Sunday at noon to carry out manual recounts of "excessive votes" and "insufficient votes" – the machines then interpreted that the voter was marking several candidates in a race or voted in certain races and not in others, or had marked the ballot in an ambiguous manner that did not indicate a clear preference for a candidate.
It is believed that there will be tens of thousands of ballots throughout the state that will need to be closely scrutinized.
While most of Florida handled automatic counting with a small fanfare, the state's third-largest county, Palm Beach County, failed to meet the 15 hours. Thursday deadline. Susan Bucher, Elections Officer for the County, said that mechanical issues were hampering the process.
Bucher said the deadline had been passed despite a "heroic effort" by his staff. As a result, the Palm Beach County results were initially released to the state – not those of an automatic recount. The results of the state elections must be certified by Tuesday.
In Palm Beach County, there are 5,900 ballots for which an excessive or insufficient number could affect the vote totals for the race in the Senate, according to Bucher. By the time Bucher spoke, manual recount tables had already been installed on folding tables in a South Florida warehouse.
"The reality is that we were very close two nights ago and our machines broke down.This is not for lack of human effort," Bucher said earlier in the day, referring to a Overheating problem of obsolete county equipment. .
On Wednesday evening, the day before the deadline, the ballot counters were no longer working and the counting table was empty for hours, even though other county offices were busy 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. / 7.
Bucher had said earlier Wednesday that the machines were working again, but at sunset, she dismissed the reporters who asked her why none of them were running before climbing into her black Mercedes and her. away from facilities around 9 pm
Miami-Dade, the state's largest county, completed its recount a day and a half ahead of schedule, while officials from nearby Broward County, which had its own problems, figured among the counties that have set Thursday's deadline.
Bucher said his team was expecting a mid-term quiet election and that it did not anticipate the need to run the county machinery, manufactured by a company that has gone missing, day and night at the time. vote counting.
The county has set aside more than $ 11 million to buy new machinery, but Bucher said it was waiting for the state legislature to amend a new law that once entered into force in two years, would make the new machines obsolete.
Ali Vitali contributed.
Source link
