Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday called on Florida to keep counting ballots beyond a Sunday deadline and said Democrat Bill Nelson still has a shot at keeping his Senate seat if all the votes are counted, just as Democrat Kyrsten Sinema came from behind in the Arizona Senate race.
“The more time that passes since election day, the better things keep looking for Democrats,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint press conference with Nelson near his Capitol office Tuesday.
Schumer said Nelson has “a much greater than half chance,” of being re-elected to the seat, which he has held since 2000.
Nelson trails Republican Gov. Rick Scott by 12,562 votes, a margin that Nelson lawyers note has shrunk by more than 70 percent since the Nov. 6 election ended and more ballots have been counted in South Florida.
Sinema beat Republican Martha McSally after uncounted ballots were tallied beyond the Nov. 6 deadline. McSally had a hefty lead on election night, but it faded away in the days following as more ballots were counted.
Despite the unresolved nature of the race, Nelson and Scott are in Washington to participate in organizing activities for the 116th Congress, including party leadership elections on Wednesday. Scott declared victory on Nov. 6, but Nelson never conceded.
The state is conducting a machine recount, due to finish Thursday, followed by a likely manual recount that must be completed by Sunday.
Schumer said the state should abandon those deadlines to ensure all the votes are counted. He said the deadlines were established after the 2000 presidential election recount and should not apply to the Senate race because it does not face a December electoral college vote in Congress, as was the case in the presidential recount.
“That means the supervisors of the elections should have all the time they need to count every Floridan’s ballot,” Schumer said. “Even if the vote count has to go beyond Sunday.”
Nelson and Schumer have called on Scott to recuse himself from overseeing the recount, although elections are handled locally and Scott has no control over them.
Schumer warned that Florida should not rush the recount or risk leaving doubt about the validity of the winner.
“We will not have a rerun of 2000, when bullying and intimidation ruled and created a rush to judgement that, to this day, many Americans believe that election was unfairly decided,” Schumer said. “That cannot happen again.”
