The ghosts of 2000 haunt the story of Florida

Democrat Andrew Gillum withdraws his concession in the governor's race.

LAUDERHILL, Florida – The elephants of the 2000 failed and canceled Florida presidential election haunted the state on Saturday as officials formally called for a recount to decide the next senator, governor and agriculture commissioner of the United States. United. Three other recounts were ordered during legislative races.

Expected since polling day, these stories announce a new and bitter chapter in Florida's political history, which became the ultimate but dysfunctional state 18 years ago, with 537 votes for the presidency, while Republicans wore unfounded accusation of electoral fraud. Democrats have revived their decades-long song to count each vote.

History continues below

Once again, a losing candidate withdraws his concession. And again, South Florida's election supervisors find themselves in the spotlight as they slowly collect votes and face credible mismanagement charges – with Broward County including 22 "illegal" ballots that should not have been counted and a judge blaming the County of Palm Beach he duplicated at least 650 duplicate ballots when the originals were destroyed.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Gillum on Saturday canceled his concession to Republican Ron DeSantis in the contest.

"I'm replacing my dealership words with a clear call for every vote to be counted," Gillum said Saturday at a press conference. "We heard a chorus of voices – a chorus counting for the end of the count in this process. What is their excuse for that? I am not sure."

With nearly 34,000 votes, Gillum's ascent remains steep. According to the FairVote research project, let's highlight the huge task at hand, namely 2,208 votes in the governors recount, or 2,208 votes in the 2004 Washington state governor race.

DeSantis focused on the remaining voting gap between him and Gillum, breaking days of silence in a one-minute video declaring victory again and never mentioning the "record" " of the world.

"With the election behind us, now is the time to come together to create a state that is preparing to serve all Floridians," said DeSantis in the video.

As in 2000, the lack of clarity in state law is a law of full employment for lawyers on both sides who make war in court rather than during the election campaign. In Leon County, for example, which attracted very little statewide attention with the start of the count, at least five lawyers from both campaigns were among the assistants at the council's launching ceremony. solicitation of Leon County on Saturday afternoon.

"I just do not want to start over," said Mark Herron, one of Florida's top election lawyers, who was part of the recounting team of former vice president Al Gore in 2000 against George W. Bush. "I just do not want it."

Under state law, races and winners are expected to be certified within 20 days, November 20, but it is unclear how long recounts and battles will last.

But despite all the similarities between 2000 and today, there are clear differences.

In Bush v. Gore, the ultra-thin margin made the end result impossible to predict. But in the race for the Senate, the governor and the US agriculture commissioner today, the margins of all leaders are big enough for the result to be much more favorable to them. after the end of the accounts, which are triggered by Florida law when the margin in a race hits 0.5 percentage points.

DeSantis has the biggest lead, or 0.41 percentage point, or 33,684 votes, Saturday noon, while the 67 state county election supervisors were required to submit unofficial results to the polls. ;State.

In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads Democratic Senator Bill Nelson with 0.15 percentage points, or 12,562 votes. And in the race for agriculture commissioner, Democrat Nikki Fried is just ahead of Republican Matt Caldwell, at 0.07%.

If the margins of the senate and the agriculture commissioner remain below 0.25%, they will be recounted manually. During this process, the ballots without votes (called sub-votes) or with multiple votes (over-votes) are inspected by hand to determine the elector's intention.

Marc Elias, a prominent Democrat Electoral Law Attorney working for Nelson, maintained his optimism at any time during a conference call with reporters after the counting began.

"I expect to see this margin disappear entirely and that Senator Nelson takes a small lead," Elias said.

Armed with zero evidence, Scott worked to stoke fears of "creeping [voter] fraud. On Thursday, he called on law enforcement to investigate the electoral offices in Broward and Palm Beach counties, both of which play key roles in counting votes during his run. The next day, the security forces confirmed that there was no allegation of electoral fraud or any ongoing investigation.

In addition, the Scott administration sent election observers to Broward County after Snipes was found to have violated federal and federal laws regarding the illegal destruction of ballots in the 2016 election cycle. These observers also reported no fraud.

Laws governing Florida stories have been revised following the amalgamation of the 2000 elections, characterized by successive recounts and multiple lawsuits that ultimately culminated in the controversial Bush v. Gore of the United States Supreme Court.

But there was still a pending legal problem before the Saturday noon deadline: could votes counted after the deadline be counted in the unofficial results that were already due, or did they not count at all? The Democrats wanted to count them. Republicans were drafting lawsuits to fight against this.

Like the rest of the week, the controversy centered on the Democratic-dominated Broward County, where election supervisor Brenda Snipes had been under fire since the day after the election. The county sent its unofficial results to the state, but continued to count the ballots. The Snipes office provided conflicting information on what should be counted.

The Miami Herald reported that Snipes had included 22 ballots cast by electors whose signatures did not match the signature on the record. Ballots with incompatible signatures are considered "illegal" under state law, which aims to put an end to electoral fraud.

But Snipes nevertheless included them in a batch of 205 provisional ballots. Once the votes are mixed, the anonymous votes can no longer be determined. So they were simply included, Snipes told the newspaper, because "it seems to me unfair to deprive of their rights 205 voters to the detriment of a few".

The previous day, a court had forced Snipes to provide Scott's campaign with data about who voted in the polls and to count the remaining votes – information that should have been available to him and that could easily be made available. under the Florida Public Records Act.

Republicans also accused Snipes of failing to comply with state law requiring the results to be updated every 45 minutes. Instead, tens of thousands of votes would be thrown into the state system – sometimes late into the night – narrowing the margins of the big races as the ballots of the densely populated county of Democrats flooded.

In the run-up to the elections, Scott administration officials were monitoring Snipes' office after he lost a lawsuit in May for illegally destroying ballots. At about the same time, Snipes had also lost another lawsuit because of the way in which she had treated the mail ballots privately, out of sight of the county solicitors' council, a three-member committee that met in March. public to handle controversies surrounding the polls and to certify local elections. .

In Palm Beach County, election supervisor Susan Bucher was also slow in communicating the results and continued to count the ballots on Saturday. As part of the Scott campaign, she was sued for her office to ask her staff to duplicate at least 650 damaged ballots. The law says that ballots must go first to the county solicitation council.

"Language [of the law] It is obvious that the decision must be made by the soliciting committee, "Judge Krista Marx of the Circuit Court said on Saturday, reprimanding Bucher, who also accused her of exceeding the deadline set by the court. "That is my opinion. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah was made to comply, "said the judge.

Bucher, in turn, has beaten with the press and tried to prevent the cameras from recording the solicitation chart. She also attacked President Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla) and Scott to tell them that the process was tainted by fraud or that Democrats were trying to "steal" the elections.

"It is 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," she told reporters. "I wish they would allow us to continue counting votes. We just do our job according to the law. "

Rubio pointed out that his home county, Miami-Dade, is the largest in the state, in front of the second largest Broward to the north and the third largest Palm Beach in South Florida, and that he was nevertheless able to finish his vote count. without the same controversies and slow results.

Another lawsuit is looming: Nelson's campaign has filed a lawsuit against Scott's secretary of state for a capricious check of voters' signatures on mail ballots and provisional. The campaign wants all ballots with incompatible signatures to count; Scott's campaign calls it an invitation to fraud.

The campaigns of Nelson and Gillum want so many votes that they even opposed when Bucher rejected a ballot paper submitted for review by a person who was not a US citizen.

"For them, the illegal votes are worth as much as the legal votes, as long as they voted for the Democrats," Scott campaign spokesman Chris Hartline said on Twitter.

When the recount was announced, the runaway candidates had the opportunity to resign and hand over the victory to their opponent. Gillum had announced the day of the elections that he conceded, but that was before all the votes of the last days were added to the total.

In at least three cases in Broward County, some polling stations labeled as containing ballots were left in some polling stations, raising suspicions about the chain of custody and incomplete counting. votes.

Outside the Election Office in Broward and Palm Beach counties, protesters from both parties scoffed and insulted, a disturbing echo of the crowd split in 2000. Democrats chanted, "Count every vote! back: "Lock it up!"

In Broward, Republicans also questioned the recent "found" votes as they saw moving trucks rise to the Lauderhill election office loading dock. Andrew Pollack, a Republican resident of Broward County and father of one of the murdered students in Parkland this year, filmed the video of moving trucks and criticized Snipes as an incompetent.

"If I went to bowling," said Pollack, "she probably could not score points."