President Trump alleged widespread misconduct by election officials in Florida’s Senate election Friday, and suggested that he was open to federal involvement in a potential recount.
“It could be,” Trump said of the federal government getting involved in the election. “Because if you look at Broward … County, they have had a horrible history. And if you look at the person, in this case a woman, involved, she has had a horrible history, and all of a sudden they’re finding votes out of nowhere and Rick Scott, who won by … a comfortable margin but close every couple hours it goes down a little bit.”
Broward County is still counting votes in the election between Scott, the state’s Republican governor, and incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson. The state has launched an investigation into the county’s supervision of the vote, with Scott alleging that Democrats are trying to steal the election.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House Friday, Trump made sweeping insinuations of voter fraud, tying together the vote counts in both Florida and Arizona, and invoking alleged misconduct in the investigation into his 2016 campaigns possible ties to Russia.
“It always seems to go the way of the Democrats,” Trump said of vote-counting. “Now in Arizona all of a sudden, out of the wilderness, they find a lot of votes and the other candidate is just winning by a hair. What’s going on in Florida is a disgrace.”
“There’s a lot of dishonesty,” Trump said.
Later on Twitter, Trump jokingly blamed Russia for the additional votes being counted.
“You mean they are just now finding votes in Florida and Georgia – but the Election was on Tuesday? Let’s blame the Russians and demand an immediate apology from President Putin!” he tweeted.
You mean they are just now finding votes in Florida and Georgia – but the Election was on Tuesday? Let’s blame the Russians and demand an immediate apology from President Putin!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2018
The margin of votes between Scott and Nelson is approximately 15,000 votes, as of Friday morning. According to the Sun-Sentinel, more 24,700 voted in Broward county for a gubernatorial candidate but not a U.S. Senate candidate. The discrepancy prompted Democrats to suspect that Nelson was missing votes.
Scott and the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced Thursday that they had sued Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes for not releasing ballot counting information.
According to Florida law, a machine recount is required if one candidate has a 0.5 percent lead over another candidate. The New York Times reports that as of Friday morning, Scott received 50.1 percent of the vote, while Nelson received 49.9 percent.
