Florida Gov. Rick Scott, whose U.S. Senate race with Bill Nelson is still in question, said late Thursday he has filed two lawsuits against county election supervisors and accused those counties of possible “rampant fraud.”
“I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election.” Gov. Rick Scott
Scott, a Republican, has seen his lead slip in the two days since Tuesday’s election, with a recount virtually certain to happen.
In his lawsuit against Broward County, Scott accused Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes of withholding information on how many people voted and how many ballots are left to be counted. Scott currently holds a lead of less than 22,000 votes in the state, with an unknown number of ballots yet to be counted in heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties.
“The lack of transparency raises substantial concerns about the validity of the election process,” his lawsuit against Broward County said.
In his lawsuit against Palm Beach County, Scott claimed officials were withholding the ballot count and were denying Republican officials access to the area where ballots were being counted.
Broward County officials were reportedly still counting early-voting and vote-by-mail ballots, while Palm Beach County was still counting mail-in ballots.
“Every Floridian should be concerned there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward counties,” Scott said at a press conference Thursday night, without providing evidence of fraud.
Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson, the sitting Democratic senator, accused Scott of a baseless partisan claim. “The goal here is to see that all the votes in Florida are counted and counted accurately,” he said in a statement. “Rick Scott’s action appears to be politically motivated and borne out of desperation.”
In a televised interview on Miami’s WPLG-TV, Snipes defended her county’s slow count. “We ran 22 sites, we ran 14 days, we ran 12 hours, we had a big vote by mail (during early voting), so don’t try to turn it around to make it seem like I’m making comedy out of this,” she told a reporter.
Earlier this year, Snipes’ office was found to have broken state and federal law by destroying ballots from the August 2016 primary too quickly.
The Scott-Nelson race is not the only one in Florida yet to be settled. In the governor’s race, Republican Ron DeSantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum by just under 43,000 votes, with a recount possible.
Gillum chimed in Thursday night, tweeting: “Mr. @FLGovScott — counting votes isn’t partisan — it’s democracy. Count every vote.”
The deadline for Florida counties to submit the first set of unofficial returns is noon Saturday.
