Florida officials have ordered a manual recount of results in the U.S. Senate race, where about 12,600 votes separated Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson from Republican Rick Scott, the state’s governor.
At least three counties did not submit new totals for the machine recount and are relying on counts from last week.
Palm Beach County’s election supervisor said less than an hour before the 3 p.m. deadline that they would not finish the machine recount in any of three statewide races still in question and would move on to the manual recount at 4 p.m.
In Broward County, results from the machine recount were received at 3:02 p.m. — two minutes past the deadline.
And in Hillsborough County, officials said the number of votes after the recount was lower, but the margins in the races were the same, so they were sticking with the first unofficial returns.
Following a five-day machine recount of the more than 8.3 million votes cast in the Nov. 6 election, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered the historic hand recount.
The order gives canvassing boards in the state’s 67 counties three days to pore over thousands of ballots that were rejected by machines because of “overvotes” — when a voter appears to have chosen more than one candidate in a race — or “undervotes,” in which a voter appears to have skipped a race altogether.
With the help of state guidelines, the canvassing boards, which are allowed to enlist the help of volunteers, will try to determine how these voters intended to vote.
In the governor’s race, Ron DeSantis (R) has defeated Andrew Gillum (D) and no hand recount was ordered.
