Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner was aware of recount issues that surfaced in Broward County on Sunday, but said through a spokeswoman that the issues were resolved. The county had an issue during the logic and accuracy testing, spokeswoman Sarah Revell, but the recount is now underway. Logic and accuracy testing is required so that any potential issues can be corrected before a recount begins. On Saturday, the razor-thin margins in the races of U.S. Senate, agriculture commissioner and the governor’s race caused Detzner to order mandatory machine recounts in all three statewide races after all counties submitted their unofficial results by noon. The state’s 67 elections departments have just five days to recount more than 8.2 million combined ballots cast over an entire month leading up to Tuesday’s midterms. On Sunday, the numbers remained tight.
In the race for U.S. Senate, Gov. Rick Scott leads U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson by 12,562 votes, a difference of 0.15 percent. In the race for governor, U.S. Rep Ron DeSantis leads Tallahassee Mayor by 33,684 votes, a difference of 0.41 percent. And in the notably close race for agriculture commissioner, Fort Lauderdale attorney and lobbyist Nicole “Nikki” Fried leads Rep. Matt Caldwell by 5,326 votes, a difference of 0.07 percent.
By Sunday morning, about 480 more overseas ballots had been received statewide, according to University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith. Miami-Dade has about 3,300 overseas ballots out, while Broward has 2,600 and Palm Beach has 1,600. Over 10,100 vote-by-mail ballots in Florida have been rejected because of a unspecified “voter-caused error,” and another 10,100 have been rejected because of missing a signature on the Voter’s Certificate.
Broward County was supposed to start its recount at 7 a.m. Sunday, cranking out recounts in 24-hour shifts from its Lauderhill facility. But glitches with the machines delayed the start by four hours.
The county also has to recount four local elections, will run more than 700,000 ballots through its machines. A total of seven races will be recounted on the same machines. Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told reporters Saturday that the machines can handle them all at same time.
Full Article: FL 2018 recount: Counties race to recount votes by Thursday | Miami Herald.