Posted on 11/15/2018 2:55:02 PM PST by Red Badger
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 race for agriculture commissioner between Nicole "Nikki" Fried and Matt Caldwell.
The order gives canvassing boards in the state's 67 counties three days to pore over thousands of ballots that were rejected by machines because of "overvotes" a voter appears to have chosen more than one candidate in a race or "undervotes," in which a voter appears to have skipped a race altogether. With the help of state guidelines, the canvassing boards, which are allowed to enlist the help of volunteers, will try to determine how these voters intended to vote.
It's not entirely clear how many such overvotes and undervotes exist in the U. S. Senate race. A Times/Herald analysis of state and county data shows the number could be between 35,000 and 118,000 But the determination on how those ballots were cast and the ability of the state's elections supervisors to get through all the ballots could go a long way toward deciding whether Nelson is reelected or Scott ascends from governor to U.S. Senator.
Thursday's order has been expected for at least a week. Elections supervisors around the state began bracing for automatic recounts in the hours after the polls closed on the midterm elections, as late-breaking returns out of heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties slimmed leads by Scott, Caldwell and GOP gubernatorial nominee Ron DeSantis.
Florida law requires a machine recount for any race decided by one half of one percentage point or less, and all three races were within the margins when elections supervisors submitted their unofficial results Saturday to the state. As required by law, Detzner quickly gave the state's canvassing boards five days to run their voting totals again in the three races to confirm whether any fell within one quarter of one percentage point, the margin by which Florida law requires a hand recount.
DeSantis' lead held Thursday as the counties reported their tallies, keeping him above the quarter-point threshold and making him Florida's governor-elect barring a legal challenge from Andrew Gillum. But, as expected, the margins in the U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner races remained under the threshold, requiring hand recounts of overvotes and undervotes.
Now, the canvassing boards and teams of at least two volunteers with at least one Republican and one Democrat on each team will pore over thousands of ballots and report back to Detzner. State law requires that the state's canvassing boards conclude that process by Sunday, so that Florida's elections canvassing commission can certify the results of the election by Tuesday.
Search works.
Your post is a dupe.
So where are they getting the number of thousands from?
Are they being given 3 days to hand count all 8,300,000 votes or just the ones called “undervote” and “overvote”.
Is Secretary of State Ken Detzner a Rat? if not, he is a f’n idiot. Yeah we can trust the “volunteers” to guess the intent of messed up ballots
So...this means DeSantis is elected Governor?
Total bullcrap. Now we have mind readers. I can guarantee you that this will almost surely result in Schumer's rubber stamp Bill Nelson gaining votes.
Why? Because the black population was very excited to vote for Gollum. They were NOT excited about Nelson. I am betting most of them went for ONE purpose to the polls: to elect the "first black governor". They found his name, checked it, and skedaddled. Many undoubtedly left the Senate race BLANK.
Now, through the magic divination of canvassing boards, those BLANK ballots will be "deemed" as votes for Nelson.
Thievery.
The other post beat this one by less than two minutes. Kindly get off your high horse.
Just end it already!
The Times is lying. We actually do know about how many undervotes that there are. Broward has the most. There is about a 30K undervote in Broward. The consensus is that most of it can be attributed to the wacky ballot design by the incompetent Clown Snipes.
The undervote was uniform countywide when you take into account the fact that there were uncontested Congressional races in some precincts.
Moreover, the undervote in Broward probably affected Scott and Nelson somewhat equally.
DeSantis received 10K more votes than Scott. Gillum received 10K more votes than Nelson.
Palm Beach had about 12K Undervotes. Miami Dade had about 10K.
There are approximately 45K undervotes scattered around the rest of the State.
Most of the undervotes will be true undervotes. These happen in every election.
Just the under and over votes.
Either that or hes following FL law...
Well, it’s not like the under-vote ballots
and over-vote ballots are in separate piles.
It sounds like they have dig through every ballot
just to find the ones that should be reevaluated.
“Why? Because the black population was very excited to vote for Gollum. They were NOT excited about Nelson”
Absolutely. Any fool can see why there were less votes for Nelson then Gollum in the black areas. Many blacks simply didn’t care which white dude won. The SOS is f’n moron to allow subjective “volunteers” to “interpret” the under/overcount and where the hell is the 11th circuit appeal decision. The Obama judge obviously made a split decision to appear fair when the big decision was to allow the forged ballots in.
Sounds like it! They dodged a bullet.
“...the canvassing boards...will try to determine how these voters intended to vote.”
I thought that kind of stupidity, utter stupidity, would have been resolved after the election in 2000. We all remember seeing shots of those fools holding a ballot up in the air and claiming to read the voter’s mind.
How is it possible to divine voter intent from an unmarked ballot. Sometimes when I vote, if I don’t know who to vote for, I don’t mark anything by that selection. That is my intent.
How dumb I was to assign logical behavior to politicians, especially the kind that are elected in Florida.
Rick Scott had eight years to prepare for Broward County.
some of us like double posts of important stories. it’s not like it takes a lot of effort to scroll past if you find the duplication offensive
What’s wrong with a voter skipping a race?
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