Total recall: Florida faces prospect of vote recounts after US midterm elections
- If the race proceeds to a recount, no new call will be made until the recount is complete
- US President Donald Trump weighs in with a tweet
Florida, the state that dragged the 2000 US presidential election to a crawl and nearly broke the country’s storied democratic process is once again headed toward the uncertainty of a statewide recount.
Except this time, instead of one nationally important race, at least three crucial contests must be tallied again in the state’s 67 counties.
The looming recounts have already led to unfounded charges of elections theft, a reneged concession speech - and an audacious campaign request by the outgoing governor for a public corruption investigation into the counting of ballots that could determine whether he wins his own campaign for US Senate.
More than 48 hours after the country concluded the midterm elections, it’s still unknown who will be Florida’s next US senator, governor and agriculture commissioner, or how long it will be before those pronouncements can be made.
“I think it is fair to say right now that the results of the 2018 Senate election are unknown,” said Marc Elias, the lead lawyer on US Senator Bill Nelson’s recount team.
The state’s elections unexpectedly devolved into calamity Thursday thanks largely to thousands of votes belatedly trickling out of heavily Democratic South Florida.
