FLORIDA UPDATE – AT 2:21 P.M. ET:  Major development.  Both the gubernatorial and Senate votes in Florida will be recounted, the Florida secretary of state has just announced.  From the Miami Herald: 

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered recounts in three statewide elections Saturday, triggering a scramble by the state’s 67 elections departments as they pore over more than 8.2 million combined ballots in the next five days.

Detzner called for automatic machine recounts in the state’s races for U.S. Senate, governor and agricultural commissioner after receiving unofficial vote counts at noon from the elections departments overseeing Tuesday’s midterm elections. It was not a choice: Statewide contests decided by a half a percentage point or less must be reanalyzed under Florida law, and the races between Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum, and Matt Caldwell and Nikki Fried were all within razon-thin margins.

Already expected by the campaigns and elections departments, the recount order triggered a flurry of activity around the state as elections departments pushed to meet a Nov. 15 deadline to submit their newly tallied returns. With all counties having submitted unofficial vote tallies, Florida’s Division of Elections showed that 8,302,983 ballots must be recounted over the next five days.

The total vote count reported by the state after receiving the unofficial final tallies from the counties showed DeSantis leading Gillum by 33,684 votes, a difference of .41 percent; Scott leading Nelson by 12,562 votes, a difference of .15 percent, and Fried leadng Caldwell by 5,326 votes, a difference of .06 percent.

The order applies to the entire state, but most eyes will be on South Florida, where late-developing returns in the past four days shrunk margins for Republican frontrunners and, in Caldwell’s case, took him from the lead to the rear. Scott’s campaign has filed lawsuits against Broward Supervisor Brenda Snipes and her Palm Beach counterpart, Susan Bucher, alleging noncompliance with state public-records and elections laws. Caldwell has also sued Snipes.

And...

Once elections supervisors send their recount totals back to the state, Detzner may order a manual recount for any race within a quarter of a percentage point. Currently, based on unofficial totals, the U.S. Senate race between Scott and Nelson and the race for commissioner of agriculture could need manual recounts.

Detzner could decline to order manual recounts if the losing candidates ask that the election be ended, or if the number of votes to be recounted is less than the number of votes needed to change the outcome of the race.

COMMENT:  Now the question is whether the recount will be honest.  If Gillum wins the governorship, you may be sure that the press will declare the recount a great victory for social justice.  If DeSantis wins, the same press will probably say that a "cloud" hangs over the election, that DeSantis may be "illegitimate."  That's what they did to George W. Bush in 2000.  And to Donald Trump in 2016.

November 10, 2018