Florida 2018 Election: Recounts, Mishaps And ‘Broward Effect'

LAUDERHILL, FL — Eerily reminiscent of the hanging chad debacle of the Bush-Gore era, dozens of peaceful protesters carrying signs that read "Lock her up," "Don't Steal My Election" and "Fake Votes"continued their peaceful protest over the weekend outside the headquarters of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections as President Trump lambasted Democrats over what he dubbed "The Broward effect."

Broward County officials faced further headaches Sunday after they acknowledged the county mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected. The problem seemed impossible to fix because the dismissed ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots and the election supervisor said it would be unfair to throw out all of those votes.

By the end of Sunday, Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate, filed suit against the Broward election supervisor in a circuit court. He sought a judge’s order that law enforcement agents impound and secure all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots “when not in use until such time as any recounts.” The lawsuit accused the Broward County supervisor of elections of repeatedly failing to account for the number of ballots left to be counted and failing to report results regularly as required by law.

With thousands of additional votes being added to Florida's vote tallies since Election Day, there has been a growing focus on this South Florida county and elections supervisor Brenda Calhoun Snipes in particular. The retired elementary school principal has lived in the county since 1964, when she and her husband traded Alabama's Heart of Dixie for Florida's endless palm trees and coastline.

Much of the criticism and frustration stems from the fact that more than 8 million Floridians took time away from their jobs, families and schools to vote in an election they were told would possibly be one of the most consequential of their lifetimes.

Yet, there has been growing uncertainty over the results, particularly with respect to the U.S. Senate contest between Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson, but also in the race between Tallahassee Democrat Mayor Andrew Gillum and Republican former Congressman Ron DeSantis to become Florida's next governor.

On Saturday, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered machine recounts in three races, including the Senate race, governor’s race and commissioner of agriculture race. The recounts got underway on Sunday but were delayed for several hours in Broward County because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines.

"All of a sudden they're finding votes out of nowhere," the president told a group of reporters outside the White House prior to the start of the recount. "There's bad things that have gone on in Broward County — really bad things."

While there's no hard evidence to support the president's theory, it is true there has been a steady erosion of Scott's lead in the unofficial vote tallies from Broward County. The governor released the following chronology of the ever-changing Broward vote as he unleashed a public torrent of the handling of election returns in Broward and nearby Palm Beach County.

"On Tuesday night, our win was projected to be around 57,000 votes," the governor said Thursday night.

"By Wednesday morning, that lead dropped to 38,000," he said. "By Wednesday evening, it was around 30,000. This morning, it was around 21,000. Now, it is 15,000."

On election night, Broward County was reporting a total of only 634,000 votes, according to the governor.

"At 1 a.m. today, there were 695,700 ballots cast on Election Day," Scott said Thursday, warning voters to be concerned in both counties of what he described as possible "rampant" fraud. "At 2:30 pm today, the number was up to 707,223 ballots cast on Election Day."

Nelson countered that the election process was working as intended.

"Votes are not being found. They’re being counted," the senator insisted. "We will continue to ensure that this election is conducted fairly, the rule of law is followed and the democratic process is fulfilled."

Washington D.C. election lawyer Marc Elias, who served as general counsel to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and now represents the three-term Florida senator, correctly predicted the recount process would be ordered Saturday.

"This is a feature, not a flaw of our democratic system that we allow counties this period after election to ensure that every vote is counted," said Elias. "Part of that is a canvassing process at which point the counties go back and check the election results that were unofficial."

He said that election officials across Florida have been attempting to verify that there were no transcription errors in the case of results provided by telephone and no ballots that haven't been counted — either those in machines or provisional ballots cast by people who went to vote without one of the 12 accepted forms of identification, those who didn't turn up among the rolls of registered voters or some other reason.

Detzner was required by Florida law to order a machine recount in the case of the state's two marquee contests and the commissioner of agriculture race since the results met a certain threshold. The announcement followed a noon deadline for Florida's 67 counties to submit unofficial results for certification.

“The first unofficial set of returns for the U.S. Senate, governor and commissioner of agriculture races has met the statutory threshold to trigger a machine recount,” read a statement from Detzner’s office. “As required under Florida law, a statewide machine recount has been ordered by the Secretary of State.”

The Florida threshold for federal, state or multicounty races is one half of one percent, according to election officials. "The results from the machine recount constitute the second set of unofficial returns."

The machine recount returns are due back from the county canvassing boards no later than 3 p.m. Nov. 15. "The secretary of state and Division of Elections will subsequently determine if the returns for any federal, state, or multicounty races or issues on the ballot meet the statutory
threshold of one quarter of one percent requiring a manual recount."

A machine recount involves feeding each ballot through precinct
tabulators, central count tabulators or a combination of the two in each county. Ballots with overvotes and undervotes in the affected races will be set aside in case the secretary orders a manual recount.

The returns reported Tuesday night were unofficial real-time totals based on information compiled by election officials across the state. They had not yet been certified as official, a process that has been playing out county by county throughout the third most populous state.

"Our campaign, along with our attorney, Barry Richard, is monitoring the situation closely and is ready for any outcome, including a state-mandated recount," said communications director Johanna Cervone with the Gillum campaign Thursday. "Mayor Gillum started his campaign for the people, and we are committed to ensuring every single vote in Florida is counted."

Debra J. Fetterly of the U.S. Postal Service told Patch Saturday that postal officials have found no evidence to suggest that the recent mail-bomb investigation impacted the delivery of mail ballots.

"For the 2018 election, local postal officials performed regular checks for all ballots received and tendered those to the election office," she told Patch. "Regarding this specific instance, postal management is researching the matter to verify that all ballots have been handled in accordance to USPS service standards. At this time, we have no information to suggest any ballots were not properly handled and provided to local election officials, per our established process."

Elias gained prominence in 2004 as general counsel to John Kerry's presidential campaign. His clients have included former Democrat Sens. Harry Reid and Al Franken as well as dozens of other elected officials.

Unofficial returns as of Saturday morning showed Nelson trailing Scott by a count of 4,095,771 to 4,080,923. They also showed Gillum trailing DeSantis by a count of 4,073,763 votes to 4,037,761.

That is only a difference of 14,848 in the case of the Senate race and 36,002 votes in the governor's race, much closer than it was when Gillum stepped up to the podium shortly before 11 p.m. on Election Day to make his concession speech. Nelson never made a concession speech at all.

"I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote," said Gillum on Saturday. "I say this recognizing that my fate in this may not change."

DeSantis said the election results were clear, but noted that election officials must follow the rule of law.

"Those results are clear and unambiguous just as they were on election night," he said. "I am honored by the trust that Floridians have placed in me to serve as your next governor."

Attorney Elias anticipated that the recount would get underway this weekend.

"Counties are already starting to announce that they are prepared to conduct recounts starting as soon as 9 a.m. Sunday morning," said Elias. "I hope everyone in the state has got a place to go get your coffee and donuts early on Sunday, because at least Hillsborough County and others have announced an early start on Sunday."

One potential problem is with respect to ballots that were only partially counted. This phenomenon is referred to as undervoting, according to the attorney. There are believed to be at least 24,000 in Broward County alone, he said Saturday.

"Undervoting is where there are more votes cast for one office, then for other offices," he explained. "What is unusual is to undervote the top of the ticket — in fact, not only is it unusual, I can't think of another instance — in which you have fewer votes for the Senate candidate than for down ballot candidates."

While some Floridians possibly showed up only to vote for the governor's race, Elias said there are instances where people voted for lesser offices and skipped over the Senate race, which amounts to a red flag.

For example, in Broward County, a total of 683,963 votes had been cast for all candidates in the Senate race, according to the latest information available as of Saturday afternoon.

More total votes, however, were cast for the governor's race, the state attorney general race, the chief financial officer race and even for the commissioner of agriculture race. By comparison, more votes were cast in nearby Miami-Dade County for the Senate race than any of the other races.

"If you look at the results, it's not just an undervote with Senate vs. governor," Elias explained. "It's actually an undervote with respect to Senate vs. attorney general and some of the other down ballot races. And that frankly is not plausible. There simply isn't an explanation for that," he asserted.

Elias predicted that the Senate race will go to a manual recount.

He also predicted that Democrat candidates are likely to receive a significant boost in votes from Congressional Districts 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 when the dust settles.

"On the marking issues, if you go and look at past recounts, you see that voters mark ballots in a whole host of ways, where voter intent is clear, but where machines can't pick them up," he explained. "Partially filled in ovals, X's and ovals circling the names and the like. I think you'll see that Sen. Nelson, and frankly, all of the Democrats, will benefit from that."

In nearby Miami-Dade County, Democrats are taking a close look at rejection rates for mail ballots.

"In Miami-Dade there's a history of rejection of signatures of mail ballots that disproportionately impacts Hispanic, Latino and African-American voters," Elias said. "There's no good reason why that would be the case. There's no natural explanation for that. That's something we're looking at very carefully as we look at the rejection rates statewide, but particularly in Miami-Dade."

In addition, Democrats have filed open record requests in all 67 Florida counties seeking lists of voters who voted with provisional ballots, or who had their absentee ballots rejected. Some counties complied and some didn't.

"Unfortunately not every county was willing to provide us the information that we sought under Sunshine Act requests," according to Elias. "We took legal action in a couple of instances to get access to lists of provisional voters. This is public information that we sought in order to ensure that every individual who cast a lawful ballot has an opportunity to have that ballot counted and counted accurately."

ProPublica's Electionland project monitors voting problems around the country. If you had trouble voting, or if you saw something you want to tell Electionland about, here’s how.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

A crowd protests outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office on Friday in Lauderhill, Florida. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper).