What The Heck Is Going On With The Unresolved Races In Florida, Arizona And Georgia? Here's What We Know
More than three days after polls closed on Election Day, a number of high-profile races remain up in the air as county election officials continue to tally votes. Tight races in Florida, Arizona and Georgia have inspired lawsuits from both Republicans (seeking to count fewer ballots) and Democrats (seeking to count more ballots). Here's what's going on.
Florida
The most dramatic unresolved race in Florida is the US Senate race between Republican Rick Scott, the current governor of Florida, and Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson. As of Friday morning, Scott holds a lead of 0.18%, or about 15,000 votes. Florida law requires a machine recount of votes in races where the margin of difference between the candidates is under 0.5% and a subsequent hand recount for a difference under 0.25%.
Part of what makes the Senate race so interesting is that Broward County, a Democratic stronghold, is currently reporting that 24,900 people cast ballots voting in the governor's race but not in the Senate race. One possibility is the voting machines didn't detect voters' markings in the box for the Senate race. Another possibility is that voters didn't notice the Senate race box due to poor ballot design.
Whatever the cause for the discrepancy, Scott is trying to end the vote count so he can be declared the winner as soon as possible. On Thursday night, Scott's campaign filed lawsuits against top election officials in Broward County and Palm Beach County as Scott called on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate those counties' election offices. (The Department of Law Enforcement subsequently found no allegations of voter fraud.)
Scott accused the Democratic election officials of "rank incompetence" and suggested, without evidence, that "votes are coming out of nowhere." "Every Floridian should be concerned that there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward counties," Scott said, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. President Trump also weighed in with unsubstantiated tweets about fraud. A spokesperson for Nelson's campaign said that Scott's legal action "appears to be politically motivated and borne out of desperation."
It's not unusual for vote tallies to change in the days after an election, as local election authorities count absentee, early-voting and provisional ballots, but Broward County's election supervisor, Brenda Snipes, has refused to say how many ballots remain to be counted by her office. Snipes also has a history of incompetently handling elections and ballots:
In one instance, her office prematurely disposed of ballots cast in the 2016 Democratic congressional primary between incumbent Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova. Critically, Snipes did not destroy the ballots before they were counted, but merely failed to wait the statutorily mandated amount of time before eliminating them. Given that the Schultz–Canova race wasn't a close contest in the initial vote (and wasn't expected to be), there's little reason to interpret Snipes's actions as consequential or nefarious (which is to say, there is little reason to think she destroyed the ballots to secure her preferred candidate's victory). In another instance, a judge found that Snipes was not following the proper procedure for tabulating absentee ballots.
Besides the Senate race, two races in Florida remain unresolved. One is the high-profile governor's race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum. Gillum conceded to DeSantis on Tuesday night, but subsequent vote counting has narrowed DeSantis' lead to 0.47%, beneath the threshold to trigger an automatic machine recount.
The third unresolved race is the tightest but also the least nationally interesting: The current vote tally in the contest for state agricultural commissioner has Democrat Nikki Fried up about 3,000 votes over Republican Matt Caldwell.
Florida's 67 counties must submit their final vote tallies to the state's Division of Elections by Saturday at noon.
Arizona
In Arizona, the race to replace Senator Jeff Flake, who is retiring, has resulted in a razor-close margin. As of Thursday, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has a lead of 9,610 votes, or about 0.5 percentage points, over Republican Martha McSally, and 400,000 mail-in ballots remain to be counted. (Most voters vote by mail in Arizona.) On Thursday, the Republican party in Yuma, Navajo, Apache and Maricopa counties filed a lawsuit challenging some Arizona counties' practice of calling some voters to confirm that they did actually cast the ballot sent in under their name:
If there is a mismatch between the signature on file and the signature on an early ballot dropped off on Election Day, some county recorders — including Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes — believe they can contact those voters after Election Day. In phone calls, they allow voters to verify that they did, in fact, sign the green envelope of the ballot, as required by law.
The lawsuit alleges that state law only allows this practice prior to Election Day, not after. It asserts the process is unfair to voters residing in other counties where that process is only allowed before Election Day.
Democratic groups in Arizona say the lawsuit is an attempt at voter suppression. "The Republican party is doing everything it can to silence thousands of Arizonans who already cast their ballots," said the Arizona Democratic party chairwoman in a statement. Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Senator John McCain, also criticized the lawsuit:
Because of the prevalence of mail voting, it usually takes Arizona weeks after Election Day to fully count its ballots.
Georgia
In Georgia, any election result with a margin of difference below 1% triggers a recount. Additionally, if the top candidate in a statewide election receives less than 50% of the vote, a runoff election is called. Both of these scenarios are in play in the governor's race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp, who has a lead of about 63,000 votes as of Thursday night. Kemp has declared himself the winner, while Abrams has yet to concede.
Kemp received widespread condemnation during the campaign for the conflict of interest between his role as Georgia's top elections official and his candidacy. On Thursday, after a group of voters sued to block Kemp from continuing to oversee the election, Kemp resigned as secretary of state, saying that he intended to begin preparing for his role as governor.
During a press conference on Thursday, Kemp said he was not concerned about the suit and was stepping down to begin his transition to governor. "We've won and now I've got to move on, but the process is true and has been for many, many years in Georgia," he told reporters.
Soon after, lawyers for Abrams's campaign held their own press conference, where they explained why the candidate would not be conceding the election and blamed Kemp for a number of issues on Election Day, which saw voters in a handful of precincts with large nonwhite populations deal with hours-long lines, an insufficient number of voting machines, and a dearth of provisional ballots.
[Vox]
Meanwhile, the Georgia Democratic Party is suing one Georgia county's board of elections to insist that absentee ballots received after Election Day be counted. The lawsuit contends that the county failed to distribute absentee ballots in a timely manner.
Some residents of Dougherty County, which includes the city of Albany, requested ballots by mail and never received them, [attorney Kurt] Kastorf said. Others received them too close to the election and weren't given enough time to complete and return ballots by the state's deadline, he said.
The lawsuit requests that the county be forced to count absentee ballots received through Friday as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday, rules already in place for members of the military and residents living overseas. Under current rules, all other absentee ballots must have been received by Election Day to be counted.
[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Georgia counties must verify their vote tallies and send them to the secretary of state's office by November 13.
