Miami (AFP) – Florida faced the chaotic final hours Thursday before an election recount deadline mandated in its US Senate and governor races that President Donald Trump says have been marred by vote fraud.
The November 6 election results remained too close to declare official winners in the two races, after 8.2 million ballots were cast in the southeastern state, a political battleground where tight elections have become the norm.
The state’s 67 counties are required to present their result tallies by 3:00 pm (2000 GMT) Thursday, even as it appeared unclear whether all counties will be able to.
Whatever the results, Trump’s Republicans will retain their majority in the US Senate when the new Congress is seated in January.
Republican Rick Scott, Florida’s term-limited governor, was narrowly ahead when a mandatory recount was triggered Saturday.
If incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson manages to hold his seat, the Republican majority would likely stand at 52-48 in the 100-member chamber.
Defying the recount process, Scott has declared himself the winner, and appeared Wednesday in Washington where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell welcomed him as one of the “new Republican senators.”
Nelson has insisted all votes be fairly counted in the race, which Scott leads by 0.15 percentage points.
The situation is unnervingly reminiscent of 2000, when Florida mounted a recount to determine whether George W. Bush or Al Gore won the state in the presidential election.
In the wake of that chaos, Florida authorities instituted reforms that mandate a machine recount if a race is within 0.5 percentage points.
In the governor’s race, Republican Ron DeSantis was leading Democrat Andrew Gillum, aiming to become Florida’s first black governor, by 0.41 points.
Florida counties have been working overtime since last weekend to recount ballots in time.
But in one of the largest counties, Democratic-leaning Palm Beach, authorities do not expect to meet Thursday’s deadline. The Miami Herald reported that decade-old election machines there overheated, forcing a restart of the recount.
If at the end of the process the difference in the races is less than 0.25 points, a manual hand recount will be conducted, with a November 18 deadline.
Florida’s timeline requires election officials to certify the results on November 20.
Democrats and Republicans have squared off in a series of lawsuits surrounding the deadlines and thousands of ballots that were initially rejected because of mismatched signatures of citizens voting by mail.
Trump repeatedly has savaged the process. On Wednesday he said Democrats could be casting “illegal” votes and said Florida’s election chaos was a “disgrace.”
Democrats have denounced the comments as irresponsible.
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