Recounts Underway

Florida’s secretary of state announced Saturday that there will be recounts in the Senate and gubernatorial races after the races became tight enough to trigger them — amid controversy over the handling of the counts, with President Trump warning that he will be “watching closely.”

Secretary Ken Detzner issued the order after the unofficial results in both races fell within the margin that by law triggers a recount. The results of the machine recount will be due by 3 p.m. ET this coming Thursday. The votes in the Senate race between Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and the gubernatorial race between Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis and Democratic mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum, will be recounted. There will also be a recount for the race for agriculture commissioner.

Earlier Saturday, 266 stray ballots from a mail sorting facility in Opa-locka arrived at Miami-Dade’s Elections Department, a spokeswoman for the department told the Miami Herald on Saturday evening. But the Opa-locka ballots won’t be counted because Florida law says that mail-in ballots can be counted only if they arrive by the time that polls close on Election Day, the newspaper reported.

On Saturday morning, a group of protesters outside the Miami-Dade agency’s offices demanded that all ballots be counted, regardless of when they were received, the Herald reported.

The shrinking leads quickly led to suspicions from Republicans that foul play was afoot in Democratic strongholds of Broward and Palm Beach counties. Democrats, meanwhile, have accused Republicans of trying to stop all votes from being counted. President Trump on Saturday told reporters that “they are finding votes out of nowhere.”

“What’s going on in Florida is a disgrace,” he said.

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