The federal and state judges charged with making crucial decisions in the vote recount efforts in Florida and Georgia all have ties to the Democratic party.
There are currently a handful of recounts going on in Florida and Georgia, including gubernatorial, Senate, and statewide races. Arguably, the most crucial decisions in these recounts are being overseen by judges that were either appointed by a former Democratic president, or, at the very least, have loose ties to the Democratic party.
In Florida, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker and Leon County Circuit Court Judge Karen Gievers are the judges in question. Both judges made consequential rulings this week that extended the weekslong recount efforts that have drawn ire from Florida Republicans and President Trump.
Walker is overseeing the recount of the state’s Senate election, featuring Florida Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. Walker was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2012. His wife previously made small campaign contributions to Nelson.
The judge is best known for a previous battle with Scott, where he stopped the governor’s campaign against instating felons’ voting rights. The case has caused some to question whether he is the best-suited judge to oversee this particular case.
This week, Walker was assigned federal lawsuits aimed at extending the deadline for Florida’s ongoing recount efforts. The state’s official machine recount ended at 3 p.m. Thursday and had Scott narrowly leading Nelson by a quarter of a percentage point. Walker ruled Thursday that Floridians who cast mail-in or provisional ballots have until Saturday to verify their votes, further extending the deadline.
After the new deadline, Florida will have until Nov. 20 to call the election for either Scott or Nelson.
The other judge, Karen Gievers, has more direct ties to the Democratic Party. The 69-year-old judge previously ran for statewide office twice as a Democrat but failed both times. Gievers ran as a Democrat for Florida’s secretary of state in 1998 and for insurance commissioner in 1994. In the 1994 election, she challenged Nelson for the office.
Gievers made a critical ruling Tuesday in which she argued Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner must grant Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher until Nov. 20 to complete the recounts for the U.S. Senate, governor, and agriculture commissioner races and a local state House seat. Bucher would have otherwise been required to wrap up the recount by the Thursday 3 p.m. deadline.
In Georgia, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, the federal judge in Georgia whose order raised Democratic hopes in the state’s election recount, is also an Obama appointee. She donated $2,750 to Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign. Her older sister is NPR’s longtime legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who has been accused for years by conservatives for showing liberal bias.
Totenberg issued an order Monday that barried Georgia’s secretary of state from certifying the results of the 2018 general election before Friday. The Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams, is roughly 58,150 votes behind Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state until his resignation last week and the GOP candidate.
The ruling came after a lawsuit filed by liberal pressure group Common Cause Georgia over the handling of thousands of provisional ballots cast by registered voters in the midterm elections.
