Posted on 11/09/2018 8:37:38 AM PST by Red Badger
********CURRENT VOTE MARGINS as of 8:40am Friday********
U.S. Senate – Rick Scott leads Bill Nelson by 15,092 15,079 15,068 votes
FL Governor – Ron DeSantis leads Andrew Gillum by 36,223 36,219 36,199 votes
UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect that at approximately 2pm Eastern, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections posted another 11,300 votes (which broke 70-30 in favor of Democrats). This new tranche of ballots triggered a mandatory machine recount in the governor’s race and a hand recount in the U.S. Senate race.
UPDATE #2: After another update sometime after 5pm, Nelson has gained another 2,000 votes, cutting Scott’s statewide lead to just 15,092 votes. It is unclear where these last 2,000 votes came from.
UPDATE #3: Scott has ordered FDLE to investigate Broward County’s handling of ballots. Attorneys for Rick Scott have filed a lawsuit in the 17th Judicial Circuit against Broward SOE Brenda Snipes. The lawsuit demands access to public records in an effort to know how many ballots have been cast, how many have been counted and how many ballots remain to be counted. Snipes maintains that she does not have this information.
Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis may be in trouble. Despite clear margins of victory for both men on election night, Democrat election supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach counties say they aren’t done tallying up votes. Two days after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Democrat candidates Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum benefited from nearly 46,000 Democrat votes that have been “found” in those counties and added to the statewide election outcome, throwing Florida into a partisan uproar over mandatory hand and machine recounts and the possibility that the integrity of the election process has been compromised.
Nelson already has his lawyer promising that Nelson is going to prevail, and a close advisor to Gillum posted on social media that he is aware of at least 20,000 “more” ballots that he alleges have yet to be counted:
We are now 0.02% away from a legally required machine recount of @AndrewGillum vs. @RonDeSantisFL.
42,948 votes seperate the two and I’m told at least 20k votes are left to count in @BrowardVotes. pic.twitter.com/Px8L5rn9Ac
— Kevin Cate (@KevinCate) November 8, 2018
But it is unclear how the Gillum camp could possibly know the number of outstanding ballots – if any – especially since Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes claims she has no idea how many ballots remain to be counted:
“Not sure. I’m really not sure. But we are working on those,” Snipes told CBS4 News in Miami.
Republicans have expressed frustration with Snipes, who has a long history of election “snafus.” Just days before the 2016 presidential election, Republican poll watchers discovered that Snipes and her team were illegally opening vote by mail ballots – which traditionally come from Republican voters – behind closed doors and away from the supervision of the canvassing board, whose job it is to oversee and certify the election outcome.
“This looks like intentional incompetence,” said one Republican strategist who declined to be identified. “We see it every election cycle down there. Democrat election supervisors can’t really be this incompetent, so it raises the question of whether or not they are intentionally failing to protect the integrity of the vote counting process. There’s only one reason to do that, and that’s to rig the outcome for Nelson and Gillum.”
On election night, Florida governor Rick Scott led incumbent Senator Bill Nelson by nearly 60,000 votes. The next day, Scott watched his lead inexplicably shrink. Overnight, enough new Democrat votes had been “discovered” to close the gap by 22,000 ballots. Later that day, Scott watched as Democrats in Broward added another batch of Democrat ballots favoring Nelson. This time around, it was enough to shrink Scott’s lead by another 10,000 votes.
The oddities in Broward continued again on Thursday. When Scott went to bed last night, he held a close but still decisive 30,000 vote lead. When he woke this morning, like clockwork, Broward County again had added a large tranche of Democrat votes. At about 2pm, Broward had discovered another 11,300 votes and when they were counted, they broke roughly 70-30 percent for Democrats. As of tonight (updated at 8pm), Scott leads Bill Nelson by just 22,000 17,344 15,092 15,079 votes, requiring a mandatory hand recount.
Those new votes also reduced Governor-elect Ron DeSantis’s margin of victory to just 38,515 36,223 votes, or 0.47 0.44 percentage points (as of 8pm Thursday) based on the total turnout of 8.2 million votes cast. Anything less than 0.5% triggers an automatic machine recount.
Representatives from both the Scott and DeSantis campaigns say they have attorneys and representatives on site in Broward and Palm Beach, attempting to monitor the situation, but some Republicans are concerned about partisan poll workers gaming the system during a machine recount, where poll workers manually feed ballots into a machine, rather than the actual voters themselves, as happens on election day. Worse, in the case of hand recount, Snipes and her staff may be free to determine the voter’s “intent” rather than simply allowing machines to read the ballots.
“Once we get to that level,” said the Republican strategist, “it’s going to get crazy. With Brenda Snipes running the recount in Broward County, Florida voters should be very, very concerned about the integrity of this process.”,
Because she’s BLACK and so is EVERYONE in her office except one Hispanic!
I’m glad I’m not trying to sell a property in FLA right now.
[[So any ballots (not votes) that “turn up” CANNOT be considered or counted]]
Apparently they ARE counting them as Scott’s lead was cut in half overnight
[[This is a CRIME. Major crime, both in terms of State Law and Federal Law as this involves a US Senate election.]]
Dontchaknow? Dems are above the law because republicans are too spineless to prosecute them for anything
Governor Scott also did NOT remove the corrupt Sheriff of Broward County, Scott Israel (who is still in office after the Parkland High Shooting derelection of duty and incompetence, and after a Sheriff Officers PBA Union vote of no confidence- 534 to 94 and petitioned Gov. Scott to have this sheriff removed, for corrupt and piss poor politicalized “leadership”), around the same time the judge decided that Snipes office should be monitored in the 2018 election, on SITE by FL Elections officials. In the context of this illegal voting scandal— if Israel is caught or any of his crony pal officers are caught transporting illegally obtained ballots— he will do time, Federal time, in conjunction with his IRS investigation.
This from wikipedia:
“Sheriff Israel has been criticized by his political opponents[10], accused of hiring his political supporters to work in “community outreach” jobs that consist mostly of going to meetings, touting the Sheriff’s Department’s success. Ten such workers were hired since 2013, for salaries totalling $634,479.
Israel responded to criticism of his team with “lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep,” while also stating he doesn’t spend more than ten seconds listening to his opponents’ criticisms.[10]
On April 20, 2018, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association opened a no-confidence vote for members, scheduled to conclude on April 26. This is the first no-confidence vote the union has brought against a sheriff.[11] The no-confidence vote concluded 534–94 against Israel.[12]
In May 2018, following the April vote of no-confidence, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association paid for a billboard just north of Sunrise Boulevard on Interstate 95 appealing to Governor Rick Scott and referencing their vote with the phrase “There is no confidence in Sheriff Israel”. The association has called for the governor to remove Israel following his handling of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.[13]
Scott should order the State Police to confiscate all of the ballots and let the democrats take it to the Supreme Court they can yell “Constitutional crisis!” before Judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch while Schumer is yelling it on CNN.
[[Snipes has a really bad history of fraudulent activity and should be in jail for voter fraud,]]
Instead the republican let her keep her job- does anyone for 1 second think that if the roles were reversed, if Scott had done the things she had done, that the dems would have let him keep his job? They would have had in in prison in a heartbeat-
You miss the LEGAL point— the “lead” is a “count” made by media only. There is nothing of the sort, as the county’s canvassing Board cannot submit the “ballots” discovered and then tabulated after 30 minutes after the close of Election Day. That is the Law.
And it will be enforced. Politically this is hot water and riot country— hence the use of the FL Dept. of Law Enforcement— the super cops and the State Troopers. This is a lawless, dangerous county. Including the existing criminal Sheriff. See my post below.
If the state - and the gop - lets them steal another election - we are finished.
i didn’;t miss the legal point-
Brenda Snipes got away with it before- republicans have been too milquetoast to prosecute liberal wrongdoers in the past- that is why dems are above the law- that is why snipes still had her job-
As of a few minutes ago Fox reported that Nelson has taken the lead over Scott.
I am already set up to supervise the Senate race manual recount
beginning Saturday .
There are no other state wide recounts
I have not heard that
.
When did they say this ?
They can’t release them until they know how many are needed. It might be better to have a ‘redo’ election...
And this time put cameras outside of voting stations so the number of people who walk in to vote is similar to the number of people credited with voting from that precinct.
Ballots that magically appear after 30 minutes of the polls closing on Election Day are invalid according to FL election law.
Scott has moved hand count to mid week .
Precisely the correct LEGAL part of FL Election Laws Statutes— it is Statutory. So, they can “find” all they want or fabricate and whine how “it’s not fair”-— but it bears NO weight inasmuch as EVERY SINGLE other county including the largest one, Miami-Dade County, got all their tabulations and ballot counts in ON TIME. It will not wash and the “found” ballots that have a time stamp later than 73O PM EST will NOT be counted or valid. The exception is military ballots which by Law can be received past Election day up to 5 PM on November 16 (which is why they might actually be required to be counted, legally, and be the only ones that would be).
Thank you!
p
This stinks to high heaven. Heads should roll.
Dam right they know.....that Gillum is one shady dude.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.