By Jim Turner
The News Service of Florida…
TALLAHASSEE — Recounts wrapping up in small and mid-sized counties are showing few changes to initial results in the races for governor, U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner.
But bigger counties still have until Thursday afternoon to complete the state-mandated recount process.
In Leon County, where elections officials completed running more than 140,000 ballots through tabulating machines Tuesday afternoon, the candidates in the major statewide races all lost several votes.
Recounted numbers in Citrus County found two additional votes each for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, U.S. Senate candidate Rick Scott and agriculture-commissioner candidate Matt Caldwell.
In Alachua County, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s lead over Scott among county voters grew by 26 votes. Statewide, Nelson trailed Scott by 12,562 votes when unofficial results were posted Saturday from the Nov. 6 election.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, down by 33,684 in the unofficial statewide numbers, gained 12 votes in Alachua County in his race with DeSantis. And Democratic agriculture-commissioner candidate Nikki Fried, up 5,326 votes statewide on Saturday, gained 26 votes in Alachua County.
While political arguments and lawsuits have put the focus of the recount on Palm Beach and Broward counties, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said he doesn’t expect there to be “dramatic changes†in the statewide vote totals.
“That’s what I have seen borne out in most other recounts that I’ve been involved with,†Earley said. “Even in the 2000 recount, we didn’t have a lot of change, Leon County especially.â€
In Leon County, Scott’s countywide total dropped three votes while Nelson’s support went down five votes. DeSantis lost five votes. Gillum lost six votes. Caldwell’s countywide number went down three. Fried lost four votes.
Earley said he expects those numbers will be made up by each candidate if a manual recount is called because of undervotes being set apart in machine counting.
In a machine recount, all ballots are fed through voting machines. Ballots with “undervotes†or “overvotes†— in which voters may have skipped races or made extra marks in races, causing their ballots to be rejected by the machines — are set aside, or “outstacked.â€
If a manual recount becomes necessary, county canvassing boards examine the “outstacked†ballots.
Machine recounts were called for the three statewide races because each was within a margin of 0.5 percentage points or less when the unofficial results were posted.
County supervisors of election have until 3 p.m. Thursday to submit their machine recount numbers. Races with margins of 0.25 percentage points or less at that point will go to manual, or hand, recounts.
Florida Division of Elections spokeswoman Sarah Revell said the recount numbers won’t be posted for each county until after the Thursday deadline.
“We will post the second unofficial results all at one time on Florida Election Watch,†Revell said, referring to part of the division’s website.
Scott recount attorney Tim Cerio said that, as of Tuesday afternoon, 25 counties had completed recounting, and the process had started in all but Clay County, where 90,040 ballots were tabulated in the first unofficial totals.
