The deadline at noon is approaching the Senate and the governor for a possible recount

The tension continues to grow in Florida while the possibility of a recount continues to weigh on the major races: the Florida Governor's seat, the Florida senate seat and the Commissioner's seat at the same time. Agriculture.

On Saturday at noon, the 67 election supervisors are to send the unofficial election results to State Secretary Ken Detzner. Detzner will then review these results and decide if races require an automatic recount.

On Friday, lawyers for the tight race candidates in the Florida Senate clashed in court Friday afternoon as the race appeared to be recounted alongside the race for the post. governor.

Governor Rick Scott, Republican candidate in the Senate, says election officials in South Florida are trying to "steal" the elections for Democrats, while President Donald Trump said officials "found votes of zero hand ". Both requests were made without evidence.

Scott's campaign brought a lawsuit asking Broward Elections supervisor Brenda Snipes to hand over several documents detailing the count and collection of ballots cast for each day of the past week.

A hearing on the case took place on Friday afternoon. Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips of the Circuit said that there had been a violation of the Constitution and the Florida Public Records Act. The judge ordered Snipes to allow the records to be examined at 7:00 pm or earlier. Friday.

Snipes' lawyers argued that requiring such a quick response would hinder ongoing efforts to finish counting Broward County ballots. But Scott's lawyers have said the information must already be collected under state law and should take a few minutes to provide.

The information sought includes the ballots not yet examined by the Solicitation Committee, the postal ballots and the advance ballots.

Meanwhile, outgoing Democrat Senator Bill Nelson has begun to prepare for a possible recount in a race that is still too tight to face Scott, who is leaving the governor's seat because of term limits. Nelson's lawyer called the race "balloon jumped", while Scott's campaign urged Nelson to concede. Scott had a 0.18% lead over Nelson on Saturday.

Nelson said Friday afternoon that Scott was impeding the democratic process and was trying to prevent all votes for the Senate race from being counted.

In the race for governor, the campaign of Democrat Andrew Gillum announced Thursday that she was preparing for a possible recount. The race has tightened since he conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis on Tuesday night. Saturday morning, DeSantis was ahead of Gillum by 0.44 percentage point.

Florida is a perpetual permanent state, and many of its elections have been decided at the slimmest margin since 2000, when Florida had decided to chair the presidency by 537 votes in a contest that required more five weeks. Yet the state has never seen so many playoffs in a year.

And as in 2000, the counting process becomes contentious.

At a press conference Thursday night, Scott had stated that he had asked the Florida Law Enforcement Department to open an investigation into the election offices in the strongholds. Democrats from the counties of Palm Beach and Broward, wondering if they were too late to count swelling the Democratic vote.

"I will not sit idle while unethical Liberals are trying to steal this election from the great people of Florida," Scott said.

While the Florida Law Enforcement Department said Friday that there had been no allegations of fraud, Scott asked – but did not ordered – at the agency to conduct a survey of county election departments in search of fraud. A spokeswoman for the agency said that there was no active investigation.

Broward County is under the microscope as they have been criticized for their delays in counting ballots.

Snipes said that she did not know how many newsletters remained to be counted, but that all were being processed. She also did not know how many provisional, military and badly marked ballots were to be counted. The website of his department indicates that the ballots cast on polling day have been counted.

Snipes seemed to attribute delays to the length of the vote in a brief interview with NBC 6 on Thursday night.

"I thought I answered, you know we have five or six pages," Snipes said.

Broward officials announced that they would resume counting the provisional votes Friday afternoon. Before the countdown began, a group of protesters staged a protest in front of the election office, waving placards and chanting "Brenda Snipes Must Go."

The Palm Beach County Solicitation Committee also met on Friday for the opening and solicitation of the vote by mail and by provisional ballot.

The Palm Beach election supervisor, Susan Bucher, said they were due to finish Friday and were preparing to recount. She also spoke against criticism of the delays.

"I just felt that it was very unfortunate that some of the highest elected officials in our country are trying to disrupt our democracy because they do not like the demographics of our constituents." would like them to allow us to continue counting votes, "we are only doing our job according to law," said Bucher.

On Thursday night, at his press conference, Scott did not cite any evidence of wrongdoing and counties had until Saturday Saturday to report the unofficial count of their votes. FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said the law enforcement agency would act on Scott's request. But the agency has not announced any investigation.

Nelson's campaign issued a statement claiming that Scott's action appears to be politically motivated and driven to desperation.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump tweeted: "The police are investigating another big corruption scandal related to election fraud at #Broward and Palm Beach." Florida voted for Rick Scott!

Trump also said that it was possible for the federal government to participate in counting votes in Florida. "Suddenly they find votes out of nowhere," he said. "What's happening in Florida is a shame."

Under Florida law, a recount is mandatory if the margin of the winning candidate is less than 0.5 percentage point when the first unofficial count is verified Saturday by the Florida Secretary of State.

Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for the Florida State Department, has not been aware of another recount in a race at the governor or Senate's history. ;State.

Gillum's campaign said he hired attorney Barry Richard, who represented President George W. Bush in the 2000 count, and is monitoring the situation. Gillum's campaign said its initial deal Tuesday night was based on "the best information available on the number of outstanding ballots" at the time.

"Since then, it has become apparent that there are many more unnumbered ballots than what was originally announced," the campaign said. "We are determined to ensure that every vote in Florida is counted."

DeSantis declined to discuss recounting prospects, telling reporters that he was "very proud to be elected".

"We are working very hard on the transition," he said. "We will let the lawyers do what they have to do, but we are good and I can not wait to serve."

Florida was mocked for its management of the famous 2000 recount. At the time, the state lacked uniform rules on how to proceed. This has changed since the legislature has adopted a clear procedure on how to recount.

"It's not like in 2000. There's not a lot of room for strategy," Richard said.

Marc Elias, a lawyer hired by Nelson, said he expects further reduction in the margin.

"The results of the 2018 Senate elections are unknown and I think you and the election officials should treat them as such," Elias told reporters during a conference call. "We believe that at the end of this process, Senator Nelson will be declared the winner."

Once Florida counties have released their unofficial election results to the state department, state secretary Ken Detzner, appointed by Scott, will review the results and decide whether they will be able to do so. whether or not to recount.

In a third seat still – the post of Agriculture Commissioner of the Cabinet – the candidates were separated by 483 votes out of more than 8 million votes cast – a margin of 0.006%.

Copyright Associated Press / NBC 6 South Florida