Three Florida elections are facing recounts—Senate, governor, agriculture commissioner—and the chaos is a funhouse reflection of Bush v. Gore. Since 2000, multiple influxes of federal funding have been supposed to fix the state’s elections systems. And yet, here we are.
Nationally, recounts are relatively rare. A recount that reverses an election result is rarer still. But in places like Broward and Palm Beach counties, ballot mishaps seem inevitable. The samecounty that decided the fate of the presidency 18 years ago is cramming to deliver a clear-cut count today. Democrats back then blamed “butterfly ballots,” which separated the candidates into side-by-side columns and left the selection bubbles in the middle. Now, some say, it’s the fault of an overcrowded single-page ballot with the Senate race at the bottom.
