LAUDERHILL, Fla. – Elections workers in Broward and Miami-Dade counties began the recount process Sunday, preparing to review hundreds of thousands of ballots in three key races, including U.S. Senate and Florida governor.
While the recount was expected to start early Sunday morning, Broward officials finally started the process just before noon. A glitch with one of the 10 machines had delayed the process for hours.
The Republican Party attacked Broward County Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes of "incompetence and gross mismanagement" after the delay.
Protesters continued to gather outside the office of supervisor of elections in Lauderhill for the third straight day Sunday.
In Palm Beach County, the supervisor of elections said she doesn't believe her department can meet the Thursday deadline.
The recount in most other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, was ongoing without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
In Doral at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, officials started the recount Saturday night and have requested extra machines from Nebraska to help with the recount. The extra equipment should arrive on Monday, officials said.
Florida law requires a machine recount when the leading candidate’s margin is 0.5 percentage points or less and a hand recount if it’s 0.25 percent or less.
The deadline for the machine recount is 3 p.m. Thursday. If the margin in any race is 0.25 percent or less after the machine recount, election officials will then move to a hand recount with a deadline of Nov. 18.
Here are the most recent vote tallies:
- As of Saturday afternoon, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ron DeSantis had a slight lead against his Democratic rival, Andrew Gillum, of 33,684 votes, a margin of 0.41 percentage points.
- In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott was ahead of Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by 12,562 votes, a margin of 0.15 percentage points.
- In the race for Florida agriculture commissioner, Democrat Nikki Fried was leading Republican rival Matt Caldwell by 5,326 votes, a margin of 0.06 percentage points.
President Donald Trump and Scott have charged without evidence that the elections may have been affected by voter fraud in South Florida.
Scott said Sunday that Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by noncitizens to count, pointing to Nelson’s lawyers objecting to one provisional ballot being rejected in Palm Beach County because it was cast by a noncitizen.
“He is trying to commit fraud to win this election,” Scott told Fox News. “Bill Nelson’s a sore loser. He’s been in politics way too long.”
State officials have said they are not investigating any cases of voter fraud. State election monitors assigned to Broward and Miami-Dade counties also said they have found no evidence of voter fraud.
In video posted to Twitter on Sunday, Nelson reiterated his call for every vote to be counted.
"Clearly, Rick Scott is trying to stop all the votes from being counted and he’s impeding the democratic process," he said.