Machine recount in tight Miami state Senate race ends, as margin narrows further.
The machine recount in the race for Senate District 37, the very last state race to be called in Florida’s 2020 election cycle has come to an end, and the margin has grown even smaller.
Republican Ileana Garcia now leads Democrat incumbent Sen. José Javier Rodríguez by just 28 votes, prompting a certain hand recount that Miami-Dade elections supervisor Christina White expects will begin Thursday.
After 10 hours of counting Tuesday, the margin widened to 33 from 31 the day prior, after two overseas ballots came in Tuesday with votes for Garcia. But Wednesday’s final count put the candidates just 28 votes apart.
In Florida, the law requires an automatic machine recount if the vote margin is less than .5% and a hand recount if it is less than .25%. The District 37 recount is the first recount for new machines purchased by Miami-Dade County in 2019 as an upgrade in preparation for the presidential election. The machines will be tasked with counting more than 215,000 ballots across 183 precincts.
During the two days of machine recount, the machines separated the ballots into three stacks: Ballots that can be read, ballots that cannot be read and need to be duplicated on a fresh ballot, and ballots that have “over-votes” and “under-votes,” meaning ballots that record multiple choices for District 37 or no choices.
The ballots that are duplicated are presented before the canvassing board, which reviews them in front of elections attorneys. The over-votes and under-votes are set aside to be reviewed one by one during the hand recount process, when the canvassing board will try to determine the voter’s intent. Sometimes an under-vote means the voter filled in the bubble too light for the machine to pick up. An over-vote may mean someone made a wrong choice, crossed it out, and filled out their proper choice instead of asking for a fresh ballot.
By the end of the recount, there were 87 over-votes and 8,358 under-votes.
Because of social-distancing recommendations set by the county, the pre-approved interested parties could not gather in the tabulation room but instead request to be escorted in and observe in small groups behind a strip of red barricade tape.
The recount for District 3, which includes Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest, was delayed from Sunday due to Tropical Storm Eta, putting the pressure on election workers to finish their work before Thursday’s deadline, when machine recount results must be sent to Secretary of State Laurel Lee.
Lee can then call for a manual, or “hand” recount.
The machine recount went relatively smoothly, with only a few contested ballots that will come up in the manual recount. For instance, one damaged ballot showed pen mark next to Garcia’s name and filled in bubble next to Rodríguez’s. The rest of the ballot voted for Democrats, but the duplicated ballot marked a vote for Garcia, creating an over-vote. Democrat lawyers contested it.
The manual recount will be a crucial aspect of the process, given the similarity of the names of José Javier Rodríguez and Alex Rodríguez, the no-party candidate who got more than 6,000 votes in the race despite not campaigning. Democrat attorneys say they expect there to be what is called an “over count” of ballots where voters may have chosen Alex Rodriguez’s name, realized their mistake, and crossed it out in favor of the Democrat incumbent instead of asking for a new ballot.
Republican attorneys expect Garcia to maintain her lead.
“You never know when you’re getting into a manual, but statistically speaking, we’re feeling pretty good,” said Garcia attorney Robert Fernandez.
This story was originally published November 11, 2020 at 9:53 AM.