Hand recount starts in Florida for US Senate race
80 views · Published 25 November 2018 · 1:49 · Indexed 2 October 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(16 Nov 2018) A hand recount began Friday in Florida's acrimonious U.S. Senate contest after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by fewer than 13,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast. Under state law, a hand review is required when the victory margin is 0.25 percentage points or less. A state website's unofficial results show Scott ahead of Nelson by 0.15 percentage points. A hand recount in the Senate race does not review all votes that were cast. It will involve only that fraction of ballots in which voters cast either two votes for one race, which is called an overvote, or appeared to choose no candidate, which is an undervote. The idea is to figure out a voter's intent. The margin in the governor's race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum was 0.41 percent. That means the contest for governor appeared all but over Thursday, with a machine recount showing DeSantis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race. The overall recount has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline. And news outlets in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes. Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle. The margin between Scott and Nelson had not changed much in the last few days, conceded Marc Elias, an attorney working for Nelson's campaign. But he said he expects it to shrink due to the hand recount and the ruling on signatures. Six election-related lawsuits are pending in federal court in Tallahassee, and at least one in state court. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/d36f0d1d8c9fcaa759120c3fd3d0536e
