It’s looking more and more as if Republican Gov. Rick Scott is on his way to victory in Florida over incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson; on Thursday, with the machine recount finished, the latest results of the recount in their race showed Scott gaining 865 votes since last Sunday, according to Scott’s campaign.
That would swell Scott’s lead to 13,427 votes, and Scott went on Twitter to tell Nelson to admit he had lost.
Scott also released a statement:
Last week, Florida voters elected me as their next U.S. Senator and now the ballots have been counted twice. I am incredibly proud and humbled by the opportunity to serve Florida in Washington. Our state needs to move forward. We need to put this election behind us, and it is time for Bill Nelson to respect the will of the voters and graciously bring this process to an end rather than proceed with yet another count of the votes – which will yield the same result, and bring more embarrassment to the state that we both love and have served.
Nelson and his campaign had no comment. The Washington Times reported that Nelson sent out a fundraising email to supporters that read, “Has your signature changed over the years since you first registered to vote? Have a disability that affects your handwriting? Suffer from eyesight loss? Changed your last name? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions above, then you could be denied your right to vote and that’s why our legal challenge of this disenfranchisement law is so important.”
If the race between the two candidates results in a span of less than 0.25%, a manual recount will be executed, by dint of Florida state law. The 13,427 difference is below that margin.
Palm Beach County missed the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline for giving the results of its recount, which could return its results to pre-recount totals. As Florida Politics reported, “Bucher’s office had been conducting the recount in the order the races appeared on the ballot. That is, they planned to complete the U.S. Senate recount first, followed by the Governor’s race, the Agriculture Commissioner contest, and then finishing with the HD 89 race. But the county failed to even complete the U.S. Senate recount by Thursday’s deadline.”
On Thursday, Nelson’s campaign sued Florida election officials in order to force a hand recount in Palm Beach County. Nelson’s attorney, Marc Elias, stated, “We have sued Palm Beach County and the Florida Sec of State to require a hand count of all ballots in the county due to systematic machine failure during the machine recount.”
On Thursday, considering whether to extend the deadline in Palm Beach County, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ripped Florida legislators and election officials, blasting that Florida is “the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this.”
Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak offered a witty comment on the ineptitude of Florida election officials: