Bill Nelson concedes Florida Senate race to Rick Scott after manual recount
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Florida’s long-time Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson conceded to Republican challenger Rick Scott Sunday, drawing the hotly contested race to become the next U.S. senator to represent the Sunshine State to a close after 12 days of legal wrangling.
According to the Florida Secretary of State's office, Scott led Nelson by approximately 10,000 votes after the state's 67 counties completed machine and manual recounts
Nelson, who served three terms in the U.S. Senate, met his match in Scott, who launched a competitive campaign for Florida votes.
Scott said Nelson called him to “graciously” concede and that Scott, in turn, thanked Nelson for his years of service. Scott has now won narrow victories in three statewide races since 2010.
“Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it,” Scott said. “We must do what Americans have always done: come together for the good of our state and our country.”
The apparent victory also marks the first time in more than a century that Florida has two Republican senators representing them in Washington. The state is scheduled to certify results in the race on Nov. 20.
Election Day results showed Nelson trailing Scott by more than 56,000 votes. Scott’s lead narrowed to 12,603 votes after a statewide machine recount. The new numbers triggered an automatic hand recount under Florida law.
It’s unclear what Nelson’s plans will be post-race. The 76-year-old was first elected to office in a state House district near Cape Canaveral in 1972. He’s served three terms in the Florida House, six terms in Congress and was Florida’s insurance commissioner after Hurricane Andrew swept the Miami area.
Sunday’s hard-fought conclusion comes after a series of election missteps – in Broward and Palm Beach counties in particular -- that put Florida back in the national spotlight.
After getting off to a slow start, embattled Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes boasted Thursday about making the state’s deadline for machine recounts.
“We are excited to be at this point,” she said Thursday afternoon.
A few hours later, election officials were forced to admit the county had uploaded the results of the recount two minutes after the state’s 3 p.m. cutoff -- making its machine recount tally void.
“Basically, I just worked my ass off for nothing,” Joseph D’Alessandro, Broward County’s election planning and development director, said.
D’Alessandro said he had a hard time uploading the results in time because he wasn’t familiar with the website used to send them to the secretary of state.
When asked what would happen if Broward missed Sunday’s deadline, county attorney Drew Myers inhaled deeply and told Fox News he couldn’t even entertain the idea.
“They have to make that deadline,” he said.
Broward’s bungled recount efforts had many calling for Snipes to step down, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“There is no question that Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts, undermining Floridians’ confidence in our electoral process,” Bush tweeted on Monday. “Supervisor Snipes should be removed from her office following the recounts.”
Protesters have been camped outside Broward’s Lauderhill recount site since last Sunday.
Some carried signs that read, “Corrupt Snipes!!! Lock Her Up!” “Busted Brenda” and “I trust [Michael] Avenatti more than Brenda!” while shouting at election officials, counter-protesters and the news media.
President Trump also sounded off on Snipes, telling The Daily Caller, “When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong. She’s very competent but in a bad way.”
On Tuesday, Snipes said she’s considering leaving after the recount.
“It is time to move on,” she said. “I haven’t finalized that. I’ll just check with my family. They’ll tell me what I’m doing.”
Like Broward, Palm Beach County also missed its machine recount deadline.
Election supervisor Susan Bucher said the county found “dozens of precincts missing a significant number” of votes and indicated there may be entire boxes of ballots that weren’t counted, according to a report in the New York Times.
She also blamed the county’s issues on mechanical errors and said the scanning machine overheated. It got so bad that she had to fly in two mechanics to fix the problem. The technicians, though, witnessed Palm Beach County workers jam a paper clip into the scanner’s “enter” button to slow the high-speed scanner down. That action caused a short circuit that cut off the power.
U.S. District Judge Mark Warner, who heard several legal challenges filed in connection to the recount, slammed state lawmakers and Palm Beach County officials for failing to anticipate election problems and said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000.
“We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this,” Walker said in court.
While there have been no estimates yet on how much the 2018 recount will cost, past recounts have racked up a hefty bill.
Tags
Who is online
86 visitors
“According to the Florida Secretary of State's office, Scott led Nelson by approximately 10,000 votes after the state's 67 counties completed machine and manual recounts
Nelson, who served three terms in the U.S. Senate, met his match in Scott, who launched a competitive campaign for Florida votes.
Scott said Nelson called him to “graciously” concede and that Scott, in turn, thanked Nelson for his years of service. Scott has now won narrow victories in three statewide races since 2010.
“Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it,” Scott said. “We must do what Americans have always done: come together for the good of our state and our country.”
The apparent victory also marks the first time in more than a century that Florida has two Republican senators representing them in Washington. The state is scheduled to certify results in the race on Nov. 20.”
If all the votes were counted and the election was fair and honest? Good. Nelson lost fair and square.
If you want to know how corrupt Florida's democrats are, they purposefully waited until after the deadline in a couple counties to turn in the machine recounts because the Republicans actually picked up votes in those recounts. Instead of doing the honest thing and turning in the correct vote counts that would hurt the Democrats, they let the initial votes counts stand so Democrats candidates gained votes.
Along with Abrams giving her non-concession concession speech That means that the republicans take Georgia's governors mansion also....
That means all three of the candidates that President Obama campaigned heavily for lost.... (she even had Oprah also and still lost)
There is still hope for the nation......
Now she claims she is going to sue.... Good luck with that...
I seem to remember that some of the candidates that Trump campaigned heavily for lost...Montana and Arizona come to mind.
I thought that it was interesting/telling that bastion of conservatism, Orange County CA. the republicans lost ALL seven races. There are no republican congress reps from O/C...
It was definitely a weird election cycle, went against most norms as far as local races but didn't show up nationally....
40 years of watching elections and first time I've seen that...
Except he wasn't talking about President Trump was he. Try to stay focused.
It's called a counter point KD....Nice try but no cigar for you...
Well I'm sure it had much to do with healthcare, medicare and SSI. The republican's promised to cut those to support the tax cut they gave to the richest.
Funny how these conservatives frocked the country for 4 years by electing Trump but now want the democrats to save their healthcare and SSI.
So many really close races around the country, but you'd think that by now we would have figured out how to count votes quickly and accurately - even for the close races.
Or even handle the voting itself. If 3/4's of the country voted, I have doubts about some places being able to handle it.
That's a good point. Logistically, it's probably a blessing when voter turnout is low.
Looks like Gillum conceded in Florida's governors race also.....
Three races that the democrats really wanted to pick up, but just didn't quite have enough...
Trump made the difference in those races.
They both look like they should have died 15 years ago.
Who are you talking about?