Free Republic

Florida’s senior senator, often described as one of the luckiest politicians alive, won three terms as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate seemingly without breaking a sweat, and for good reason: He faced one weak opponent after another. After 46 years in public office, he finally met his match in Gov. Rick Scott, whose vast personal fortune, trademark aggressiveness and single-minded discipline has proven to be just enough to produce an excruciatingly narrow victory — Scott’s third, close statewide win in eight years.

Let it not be said this wasn’t transparently predictable. After missing the deadline for reporting the official machine ballot count, the hand-count in Broward County had to be halted when officials noticed the staff were counting the wrong ballots today. This comes on the heels of Broward County Supervisor of Elections claiming her critics were racist. It’s how she rolls along; year, after year, after year…. and no-one ever puts a stop to her consistent lack of competence, because racism. Yup, you can’t make this stuff up folks. FLORIDA – […] On Saturday, the volunteers started sorting about 22,000 undervotes...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on Florida recount (all times local):6 p.m.Democrat Andrew Gillum says in ending his bid for Florida governor that the race “has been the journey of our lives” for the candidate and his wife R. Jai.Gillum posted a live video on Facebook on Saturday afternoon congratulating DeSantis. Gillum had conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis on election night, but retracted it after the margin between the two candidates narrowed. The race went to a legally required recount, but after an initial machine recount DeSantis still led Gillum by more than 30,000 votes.In a statement from his...

Fresh off its bungled machine recount, Broward County’s second day of manual recounting temporarily stopped about an hour after it began Saturday when lawyers from both political parties pointed out that volunteers were counting the wrong ballots. Hundreds of volunteers spent most of Friday sorting through 32,000 overvotes and undervotes in the Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Broward officials announced Friday night they had finished their manual recount. On Saturday, the volunteers started sorting about 22,000 undervotes and overvotes in the contentious contest for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture. That came to a grinding...

Nearly 3,000 votes effectively disappeared during the machine recount of Florida’s midterm races, according to election records, calling into question whether officials relied on a flawed process to settle the outcome of three statewide contests. With extremely narrow gaps separating candidates in the still-undeclared races for both governor and United States Senate, the results of the machine recount of all votes cast in the Nov. 6 election, posted by the Florida secretary of state’s office, showed 900 fewer votes than those reported in the original statewide tally. The discrepancy was expected to grow by an additional 2,000 votes when updated...

After a big public relations buildup about razor wire being installed at the border to keep illegal migrants out, caravan migrants are at it again, this time cutting the newly installed razor wire: Customs and Border Patrol has a video of the crime in San Diego. Here's video of another one at the the border in Arizona. Both happened on the exact same day, Nov. 14. Obviously, it's coordinated, and by a very canny organized group (cartels?) that wants to send a message to the U.S. that its border efforts are useless. Tactically, it's striking first and striking hard, right...

<p>SAN DIEGO — As thousands of migrants in a caravan of Central American asylum-seekers converge on the doorstep of the United States, what they won't find are armed American soldiers standing guard.</p> <p>That's because U.S. military troops are prohibited from carrying out law enforcement duties.</p>

The official report said Whisenant, 37, shot himself in the head, which means a gun would’ve been found right next to his body – unless a passerby managed to swipe it before authorities showed up. The thing is, a gun was never found.

Democrats see a series of lawsuits in Florida’s bitter recount fight between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Gov. Rick Scott (R) as an opportunity to achieve a years-long goal: reshaping how ballots are evaluated and counted in the nation’s largest swing state in 2020 and beyond. While most of the lawsuits are centered around the recount, some Democrats see the effort as a chance to change some of the standards governing how ballots are assessed in the Sunshine State, potentially widening the pool of countable votes. That could carry implications for future elections by forcing local and state officials to...

Conservative observers of the post-Election Day chaos in Florida, Georgia and elsewhere must understand that the mess is not due to incompetence. It is part of a larger, long term plan that has been executed by Democrats to move as many elections as possible into what our friend election lawyer J. Christian Adams calls “the margin of litigation.” Once inside the margin of litigation, election laws and the rules and deadlines, with which honest Republican candidates complied pre-election, are thrown out the window by activist Leftist judges and highly partisan Democrat supervisors of elections to the advantage of Democratic candidates...

Moment of Truth: It isn’t often that CNN gets a story right in the Trump era, but network correspondent John King actually offered an honest assessment of the Democrat-caused election chaos playing out in Florida. He said during a broadcast Thursday that the party of the donkey will have to find Left-wing judicial activists on the bench who are willing to “bend” Florida law in order to hand victories to Democrats Andrew Gillum and Sen. Bill Nelson. Noting that based on legitimate returns from last week’s midterm elections, King said there’s no mathematical path to victories for Dems unless they...

As the hand recount in Florida’s contentious Senate election got underway in Broward County, it quickly became clear that Democrats were headed for a bad day. This is the county where incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson needed to net thousands of new votes on Friday. But minutes into the recount, that became unlikely. Broward County is at the center of Nelson’s hopes for defeating Republican Rick Scott, who currently leads by fewer than 13,000 votes, because there were tens of thousands of ballots in the county that registered no vote in the Senate race. Because Broward is a heavily Democratic county,...

"Well designed ballot layouts allow voters to make their intentions clear; badly designed ballots invite voters to make mistakes. This year, the Florida Senate race may be decided by a misleading ballot layout—a layout that violated the ballot design recommendations of the Election Assistance Commission."

Breaking: Broward County just finished its hand recount in the Senate race. Waaaaay ahead of schedule. This is bad news for Nelson/Democrats! Miami Dade is finished as well: https://twitter.com/doug_hanks/status/1063447118197731328

Florida Democrats urged voters to submit absentee ballots after Election Day, using an official form that had been altered to make it look like they were doing so within the legal deadline, hoping a judge would later allow the votes. That attempt to add Democratic votes, which critics say is possible election fraud, was reported Thursday morning by Ana Ceballos of the Naples Daily News, who notes the scheme has already been reported to federal prosecutors. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/15/report-florida-democrats-urged-voters-to-submit-absentee-ballots-after-election-day-using-altered-forms/

NEW: 11th Circuit has denied a request by Republicans to delay an order entered this morning giving Florida voters more time to fix problems with signatures on their ballots.

Attorneys for Republican Agriculture Commissioner candidate Matt Caldwell say Broward County collected and counted thousands of votes after the election was over. ThatÂ’s enough to chip at or even erase Democrat Nikki FriedÂ’s current lead. Results from a statewide recount show the Democratic candidate leading Caldwell by 5,307 votes, a slightly narrower lead than the 5,326-vote gap reported in the initial tabulation of the race. Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered a statewide manual recount of the election...[snip] CaldwellÂ’s legal team sued last week for records from Broward County, the seeming ground zero for FloridaÂ’s latest statewide recount news extravaganza....

Florida recount: Broward misses deadline by 2 minutes, so state rejects machine-recount results (Title changed, LOL) By two minutes, Broward County missed the ... deadline to submit recount results, so numbers provided by the county Saturday stand,... “We uploaded to the state two minutes late so the state has chosen not to use our machine recount results....D;Alessandro said the recount arrived late due to his unfamiliarity with the state’s website. “Basically, I just worked my ass off for nothing,” he said. D’Alessandro said there's a 2,040 vote difference between votes in the manual recount and those tabulated earlier. “We believe...

Following a five-day machine recount of the more than 8.3 million votes cast in the Nov. 6 elections, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered hand recounts Thursday afternoon. An unprecedented statewide hand recount is now under way in the Sunshine State, further extending a high-stakes, partisan battle over every last vote in Florida's crucial U.S. Senate race. Following a five-day machine recount of the more than 8.3 million votes cast in the Nov. 6 elections, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered hand recounts Thursday afternoon in the race between U.S. Sen Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott, and also the...

This race is over. Even while Broward and Palm Beach Counties continue with their mandatory recount, incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is still trailing Republican Gov. Rick Scott by 12,000 votes. Barring a miracle, or massive voter fraud, there’s no way he’s going to win. Even CNN admits this: Democrats hope a manual recount will overturn the results of Florida's Senate election and pave the wave for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson to keep his Senate seat.Appearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer projected confidence about Nelson's chances."Bill Nelson is -- is strong as could be," Schumer said....