Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott would have seen their margins in the governor and Senate races increase had county officials in two Democratic counties met the recount deadline Thursday. In Hillsborough County, the officials were perfectly clear: They flatly refused to submit the recounted numbers even though they had them on time.
Today at 3 p.m. was the deadline for counties to submit the totals for their machine recounts. Hillsborough successfully counted all the ballots, and then didn’t like the outcome: It was a lower total number of votes.
“[W]e are not willing to accept that votes go unreported,” said Democratic Elections Supervisor Craig Latimer. The recount would have shrunk Democrat Nelson’s countywide lead by 146 votes according to the Tampa Bay Times, thus increasing Rick Scott’s statewide lead.
Broward County did upload a recount total, but reportedly two minutes too late. So it didn’t count. Broward County also saw all candidates lose votes, and saw the Democrats’ countywide victory margins shrink.
These Broward Co. numbers, via Alex Harris of the Miami Herald, show both Nelson and Scott losing hundreds of votes, proportionately to their countywide vote totals.
Total votes for machine recount, as read by Joseph D’Alessandro. Top line is total votes cast. When they don’t add up it’s because of additional or write in candidates as well as VBM duplicates that weren’t counted. pic.twitter.com/BbwMPrshAm
— Alex Harris (@harrisalexc) November 15, 2018
The net in Broward would have been Republican Rick Scott’s statewide margin increasing by 779 votes. In the Senate race, Ron DeSantis’s margin would have increased by 755 votes.
Importantly, there will be a hand recount, so this may not be a big deal.
Maybe Hillsborough County has reason to believe its recount is less accurate than the original count. It seems Broward really did try to submit its recount numbers. But the net effect of these two Democrat-run elections offices failing to meet the deadline is a boon to the Democratic candidates.
