Molly Prince on November 16, 2018
Two counties in Florida did not submit the results of the election recount in the required time frame, which would have otherwise increased the Republican candidates’ leads over their Democrat challengers.
Both Broward and Hillsborough Counties failed to meet Thursday’s deadline to submit the tallies from the machine recounts and instead ended up submitting the unofficial vote count reported on Saturday, according to The Tampa Bay Times. The recount would have ultimately increased the margin for both Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Rep. Ron DeSantis’s races by a couple hundred votes.
The reasoning for the untimely tally in Broward County is unknown, however, Hillsborough County purposefully missed the deadline since the recount yielded fewer total votes than those recorded on Election Day.
“The fact that the percentages between the candidates remains the same gives us full confidence in our voting process and systems. Even though we achieved 99.84 percent success in our recount effort, we are not willing to accept that votes go unreported,” said Craig Latimer, the Hillsborough County Supervisor. “For that reason, the Canvassing Board has decided that the first unofficial results will stand as our second unofficial.”
Broward, on the other hand, missed the deadline by only two minutes, invalidating the entire recount.
Following the recount, Scott continues to lead Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson by just 0.15 percentage points, triggering a hand recount. DeSantis is also ahead of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, however, his 0.41 point lead is wide enough for the results to be certified on Tuesday. Gillum still refuses to concede.
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