Florida has retained the championship belt for election shenanigans, as three statewide races could be headed for a recount. The gap between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson, in the election for the latter’s Senate seat, has only continued to narrow. The race was already within the 0.5 percent margin needed to trigger a recount on Wednesday, when Scott had roughly a 35,000-vote lead. That’s been cut in half to about 17,000 as ballots have continued to come in. While Scott is still the favorite to ultimately win, FiveThirtyEight has shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” One reason for hope for Nelson is that a traditionally Democratic area, Broward County, has so far reported fewer votes for the Senate race compared with the gubernatorial race, according to data compiled by MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. In other Florida counties, no such discrepancy exists. While some of the discrepancy could be due to genuine undervotes—for instance, the design of the ballot may have led some voters to miss it and not vote in that race—it’s possible that the county hasn’t correctly counted all the ballots. About 24,000 ballots in Broward County registered a vote in the governor’s race but not for the Senate race.
The discrepancy with the Senate race tally is consistent down the ballot, with more votes cast in lower-profile races like commissioner of agriculture, chief financial officer, and attorney general than in the Senate race, according to the preliminary county results. As of Thursday afternoon, a total of 675,216 votes had been counted in the Senate race in Broward (466,321 for Nelson and 208,895 for Scott). By comparison, the gubernatorial race had 701,080 cast in Broward, and even the commissioner of agriculture race had 685,440 total votes while the chief financial officer race had 685,017 votes.
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told the Sun Sentinel that he thinks the undervotes were due to voting machines not detecting genuine votes. “I am pretty confident what you are going to see are markings that were not picked up by the machines or a calibration issue that was not registering that part of the ballot,” he said.
Full Article: Florida Senate election: missing votes in Broward County..