Florida orders first ever statewide hand-recounts as legal fights continue

www.tampabay.com ^ | 11/15/2018 | By David Smiley

[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.

[fortheDeclaration]

So, there aren’t thousands of these ballots, enough to tip the election to Nelson?

[Justa]

Hand recount? Well, that’s it folks. All the Dems will win.

In my Hillsborough county precint the poll watchers halted vote tallying 1 hr. before closing to transfer ballots from the voting box to a suitcase. The poll worker would take small batches of ballots, place them on the floor, look at them, arrainge them, then put that small batch (~20) in the suitcase. IOW she was taking a sampling of the ballots. The ballot box was much larger than the suitcase and wasn’t even 1/2 full when they paused the tallying for their transfer. When they were done the suitcase wasn’t 3/4s full. So they were sampling ballots and moving them an hour before closing.

This was Hillsborough county. I have ZERO faith in chain of custody. If the paper ballots are counted they will probably show a huge difference from the ones which were filled out and electronically counted Nov 6.

[TexasGurl24]

Actually they do separate out the undervotes and overvotes and they provided the number of each to the SOS.

[Luke21]

Guess who wins.

[spacejunkie2001]

I heard he was recently a D and probably a soros plant. Soros is working hard to place dirty SOE’s and state position over elections to screw us. I hope Trump does something about it.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Fuster cluck.

[politicket]

Can they “fill-in” the Senate race on the “Undervote” ballots if they see that the rest of the ballot was uniformly Democrat or Republican? Is that legal?

[ncalburt]

no .
They already included the clean votes in the machine count but this overvote race in question does not get counted like sewer board or city council race .
Over votes are ballots that any race like the sewer board race has more than one candidate picked .
The machine kicks it out .
The canvassing board just looks at it .
Few over voters had screwed up big races .
Under votes is no one was picked .
In this case again many times ballots had no votes for water board or
bond board .
We had two no votes in big races .
The machine counts all the races but the race or races with no votes are not counted .
The machine kicked them out as a audit check .

[Repeal The 17th]

Thanks!
Do you know at what point in the voting process they are identified and separated out?

[CivilWarBrewing]

DEMONRATS KEEP COUNTING UNTIL THEY WIN.

DEMONRATS = CHAOS

DEMONRAT:

[fortheDeclaration]

Thank you, so what is the point of going through this then?

[CivilWarBrewing]

NO, IT’S NOT LEGAL. NO ONE can vote on behalf of another person.

[ncalburt]

The county tabulation machine sorts out under and over vote ballots .
The ballots clean race decisions are counted .
The races that cause the kick out are very obvious .
The canvassing board did this during the machine count stage .
This manual recount is a waste .

[SES1066]

I echo the sentiment - duplicate posts within several minutes are because each is posting breaking news. Yes there is duplicate but jeeze Mariner, you want to be a Democrat?

[ncalburt]

I have no idea .
I sat thru two day sessions involving under and over votes and redoing damage ballots .
All these ballots were in Tuesday and Todays counts already .
That is why the machine recount had so few changes .

[gas_dr]

What should not get lost in this is that the governor race is decided...And what is so important about this is that this allow Desantis to immediately appoint three justices to the Florida Supreme Court which should make a big difference for this trickery in 2020. It also will be important for maintaining districts in Florida and not going to a D - gerrymandering. I think Scott will hold on as another poster pointed out there were about equal undervotes in Nelson and Scott race based on the affirmative votes for Desantis and Gillum — making it likely that Scott remains in the lead. Gotta love Florida

[fortheDeclaration]

Thanks again for your information.

[TexasGurl24]

Not exactly. I know for sure that they did it during the machine recount, because each county reported the total number of undervotes back to the SOS.

[MayflowerMadam]

I understand over votes being a problem. Voter screwed up. But how can any ballot have an under-vote? The voter simply didn’t want to vote in that particular race. It isn’t a flaw in a ballot.

An easy fix to that. Every ballot issue should list all the names, the “yes or no” options, etc. Then at the bottom, add one more option for every issue: “I choose not to vote”.

[dp0622]

People like that must be SO UN-FUN at parties :)