TALLAHASSEE: Flo­ri­da’s acrimonious US Senate contest is headed to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by fewer than 13,000 votes.

The contest for governor between Republican Ron De­­­­Santis and Democrat And­­rew Gillum appeared all but over on Thursday, with a machine recount showing De­Santis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race.

Gillum, who conceded on Election Night only to retract his concession later, said in a statement that “it is not over until every legally casted vote is counted.” The recount has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline.

“We gave a heroic effort,” said Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. If the county had three or four more hours, it would have made the deadline to recount ballots in the Senate race, she said.

Meanwhile, election officials in another urban county in the Tampa Bay area decided against turning in the results of their machine recount, which came up with 846 fewer votes than originally counted. And media in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes.

Counties were ordered this past weekend to conduct a machine recount of three statewide races because the margins were so tight. The next stage is a manual review of ballots that were not counted by machines to see if there is a way to figure out voter intent. Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2018