A Florida judge has sided with Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott in his dispute with Broward County election officials, ordering the county’s head of elections to turn over records regarding ballots cast in the county.
Scott, the current governor of Florida, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee filed a lawsuit against Broward County’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, on Thursday for violating state public records law.
Snipes, they claimed, was unwilling to release information about the number of ballots cast and how many ballots had yet to be counted.
Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips found that Snipes violated Florida’s public records laws and the state constitution by not disclosing the records. She ordered Snipes to provide Scott’s campaign with the number of ballots cast in Broward County for the 2018 midterm election, as well as how many still need to be tallied.
Snipes has until 7 p.m. to comply with the order.
Broward and Palm Beach counties, Democratic strongholds, have come under scrutiny in the days following Tuesday’s election, as the two counties have been slow with counting their ballots.
As the vote-counting has continued, the margins between Scott and Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson have narrowed. Scott declared victory on Election Day, but Nelson did not concede.
Now, as the gap in votes continues to shrink, the Senate race and two others in Florida appear headed to a recount.
A manual recount is likely in the race between Scott and Nelson, as is a machine recount in Florida’s gubernatorial race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis. The race for the state’s agriculture commissioner could also be headed to a machine recount.
In announcing his lawsuit, Scott accused “unethical liberals” of trying “to steal this election.”
President Trump, too, has made claims of fraud and said he is sending lawyers to Florida to expose the alleged misconduct.
