Florida recounts off to uneven start as Nelson and Scott continue to spar in court

As Republicans and Democrats continued a legal tug-of-war over Florida’s recount of ballots — and a Broward judge urged both sides to tamp down the rhetoric and preserve whatever public confidence may remain in the process — a new wrinkle emerged in Florida’s increasingly bizarre handling of elections, when one official revealed that he had allowed residents displaced by Hurricane Michael to vote by fax and email.

There is no provision in state law allowing voters to cast ballots by fax or email. But Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen defended the decision to allow about 150 voters to do so, on account of the storm that devastated the coastal county in Florida’s Panhandle in October.

“You did not go through what we went through,” he said.

Andersen said parts of the county were shut off by law enforcement, preventing people from reaching their homes. Displaced voters were allowed to fax and email their ballots to the elections office. Andersen said all the ballots were verified by signature.

In South Florida, elections officials were off to an uneven start in their efforts to meet the state’s 3 p.m. Thursday deadline for all 67 counties to finish recounting more than 8.2 million votes.

By noon Monday, Miami-Dade had reached the halfway point in its recount of more than 800,000 ballots. Miami-Dade started the process within hours after the state ordered a recount on Saturday afternoon. Its nine high-speed ballot counting machines began processing ballots shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday, and have been running 24 hours a day since.

But Broward officials said they might not start a recount of more than 700,000 votes until Tuesday, after machines had been calibrated and ballots sorted. Still, said Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, her office would meet the deadline.

And Palm Beach County’s election supervisor said her aging machines may not make the deadline for tallying votes in at least two of the three statewide races requiring a recount.

Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher said Monday her office would likely complete a machine recount in the U.S. Senate race, where Gov. Rick Scott has seen his lead over incumbent Bill Nelson shrinking. But the decade-old machines, which can only tally one race at a time, may not be able to process a recount in the governor or agriculture commissioner races — raising questions that may be decided in court.

The state says that means Bucher will have to submit the tally she already sent to the state on Saturday, when all counties had to send the state their unofficial final counts.. But there’s debate over whether that means the recounting ends or should continue until the Thursday deadline to decide whether a manual recount should take place.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates agreed to add three more Broward Sheriff’s deputies to monitor the recount of the three races — Florida governor, U.S. Senate races and agriculture commissioner — at the Broward election supervisor’s office in Lauderhill.

With Republicans pressing for state police to get involved in Broward’s recount, and Democrats calling for all votes to be counted, Circuit Judge Jack Tuter urged them to tone down the rhetoric.

“We have to be careful about what we say,” Tuter told more than 15 lawyers gathered in his courtroom Monday for a hearing on an emergency motion filed by Scott’s campaign to “impound and secure” all vote-tabulation machines in Broward’s elections headquarters when they’re not being used to recount ballots.

Though Scott and other Republicans have raised the pressure on state police to get involved in watching over the counting of ballots in heavily Democratic South Florida, no evidence has emerged to back up fraud allegations. The Florida Division of Elections has said its monitors, stationed in Broward since at least Election Day, have uncovered no criminal behavior.

Nelson’s campaign sued the Florida Department of State on Monday in an effort to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked before Election Day but not delivered before the polls closed on Nov. 6. Nelson’s campaign also has sued to prevent ballots from being disqualified due to mismatched signatures. Separately, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause have sued in federal court to prohibit Scott from using his office to affect the recount process.

Scott has declared himself the winner in the Senate race, and Marc Elias, an attorney representing Nelson in the recount, said the governor has used his office to influence the “machinery of elections” in Florida by alleging fraud by South Florida elections supervisors and calling for police to investigate.

“It’s not simply that there is rhetoric,” Elias said during a conference call with media. “He is using his governor’s authority.”

Unofficial election results show Scott leading Nelson by 0.14 percentage points as a mandatory statewide recount continues. Scott campaign spokesman Chris Hartline called the Nelson campaign’s lawsuit “nothing short of a legal white flag of surrender.”

Still, Scott’s campaign continues to lean hard on the elections process in a densely populated area of the state that could make or break his 12,562-vote lead.

The campaign’s emergency motion for machines to be impounded came days after Scott claimed that “unethical liberals” in Broward and Palm Beach counties were trying to steal the election after late-developing returns narrowed his margins over Nelson and forced the race into a statewide recount.

In a letter on Sunday, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Rick Swearingen, the commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, that she was “deeply troubled” by his agency’s decision to decline Scott’s request at a press conference to investigate possible elections fraud in the two counties and urged him to reconsider.

Besides the three statewide races, recounts were also ordered for State Senate District 18 in Hillsborough County and for State House of Representatives District 26 in Volusia County, and 89 in Palm Beach County.

Recounted vote tallies in South Florida could prove crucial in the ongoing recounts. Once recounted vote tallies are submitted to the state Thursday, any races still within one quarter of 1 percent will be subject to a hand recount. But not all 8.2 million votes will be counted by hand — only those ballots with an “undervote,” meaning a race where no candidate was selected, or an “overvote,” those with two candidates chosen for the same race — will be reviewed by canvassing boards.

While former congressman Ron DeSantis is far enough ahead of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum that a hand recount is unlikely to occur in the race for governor, Scott and Nelson are expected to continue fighting into the weekend.

Hand recount tallies would be due by Nov. 18. And South Florida, a heavily Democratic region of the state, contains more than 35,000 ballots that are considered undervotes in the Senate race. Nelson’s campaign is also fighting to include ballots rejected over signature mismatches.

Final results are to be certified on Nov. 20 by Florida’s Elections Canvassing Commission. The board consists of two members of the Florida Cabinet — and Gov. Rick Scott.

Miami Herald staff writers Douglas Hanks, Alex Harris, Jenny Staletovich, Martin Vassolo and Jay Weaver contributed to this report.

This story was originally published November 12, 2018 at 6:35 PM.