Recounts in Florida Could Ruin Sen. Nelson’s Chance of Re-election

Election workers in Florida have begun a recount of over eight million votes across the state to review the tight races for both the governorship and the Senate.

Ken Detzner, the Florida secretary of state, ordered the recounts on Saturday. Two large counties, Pinellas and Hillsborough, already started their recounts on Sunday. Overall, the whole process could take days.

This is the second time in 18 years when a problem with ballot design could potentially jeopardize Democrats’ chance in historically reliable counties in Florida. Broward County, for instance, has almost two million eligible voters and usually makes up for over 10 percent of all Democratic votes in the state. The current result shows that Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson defeated Republican challenger Rick Scott by 69 to 31 percent. In the race for governor, Republican candidate Ron DeSantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum by an extremely slim margin of 0.41 percent.

The problematic part of these results is that about 26,000 people voted for the governor race but not the Senate one. In other words, approximately 3.7 percent of all ballots cast in Broward did not register a choice for the senator—a figure significantly higher than any other 66 counties in Florida.

Some suggested that this gap stemmed from a technical issue with the machines which failed to register some people’s votes for the Senate race. Nelson’s attorney Marc Elias put forth the above theory while Broward’s election supervisor, Breda Snipe, asserted that the problem was non-existent.

There is also suspicion that the design of the ballot has led voters to overlook the Senate race. While the governor’s race is placed noticeably in the middle of the ballot, the Senate race is in an inconspicuous corner right above a big chunk of instructions. It is not difficult to imagine voters filling out one and missing the other.

Beyond Florida, this year’s midterm elections did not deliver results too surprising. As expected, Democrats won the House but lost the Senate. While votes in some races are still undeclared, here is where the elections stand now:

In the House of Representatives, Democrats have picked up 31 seats. In the meantime, 11 races—in California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, etc.— are still undecided. In total, Democrats currently occupy 225 seats and Republican 197.

As for the Senate, Republicans control 51 seats, holding a significant advantage over Democrats who only have 44 seats. There are two outstanding races: Florida and Arizona. In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Martha McSally are locked in a tight race, the former leading with 49.4% of the total votes and the latter barely falling behind with a 49.4% vote share.

In the races for governorships, Democrats have gained seven seats, now in control of 23 governorships. The Republicans still have an edge over Democrats, holding 25 governor positions. Besides the recount in Florida, there is still one undecided seat in Georgia.

Florida is not alone in causing controversies regarding the integrity of elections. In fact, this year’s midterms exhibit the prevalence of voter suppression throughout the country. Trump’s new voter ID laws effectively disenfranchised many first- and second-generation immigrant voters as well as other low-income minority groups.

According to The Atlantic, states like Georgia have witnessed the deterioration of voting rights in the past five years. Long lines and voting machine problems continue to deter citizens from going to the voting booths. Moreover, it not only became more difficult to register to vote, but those who did often find their registration canceled for technical reasons. Such legal barriers and intentionally induced confusion have disenfranchised millions. Georgian Republican Brian Kemp, for instance, reported a total number of 1.4 million voters who were disqualified since 2010.

Featured image via Colin Braley/Reuters