Florida Recount Updates

WHAT'S GOING ON?

• A statewide machine recount began Saturday of the more than 8 million votes cast in last week's midterm election.
• The recount was triggered by the razor-thin margins in both the Senate race, where Gov. Rick Scott holds a 12,562 vote, or 0.15 percent, lead over incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, and the governor's race, where Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis, led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by fewer than 34,000 votes or a margin of .41 percent.  Also being counted are the votes for agriculture commissioner.
• Florida law provides for an automatic recount when a race is close. When the margin between the candidates is equal to or less than 0.5 percent, the law provides for an automatic machine recount of the ballots. If the margin in races fall below 0.25 percent, the law provides for an automatic manual count of ballots where undervotes or overvotes are identified.
• Unofficial returns are due in Tallahassee by 3 p.m. Thursday and the secretary of state determines which races meet the less than a 0.25 percent victory margin threshold to order a hand recount.

As of Tuesday morning there were three legal actions filed in the U.S. District Court's Northern District. By the end of the day, a flurry of other cases were on the docket, bringing the total to seven. 

 And all of them are landing on the desk of Chief Judge Mark Walker, who has ruled against Gov. Rick Scott several times in astringent, colorfully worded opinions.

The legal actions deal with a range of legal issues from mismatched signatures to vote-by-mail deadlines to whether Scott — a candidate for U.S. Senate — should recuse himself from the recount process.

The first courtroom hearing on any of Nelson's lawsuits is set for 1 p.m. Wednesday before Walker in the Nov. 8 case that challenges the “standardless signature matching process” that puts “tens of thousands of Florida voters at risk of disenfranchisement in the 2018 general election.”