TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s protracted Senate election proceeded Thursday to a manual recount, the next phase in an increasingly bitter and litigious fight, while Republicans declared victory anew in the race for governor.
The state’s machine recount ended at 3 p.m. on Thursday with Republican Gov. Rick Scott leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by less than one-quarter of one percentage point, within the margin that legally triggers a manual recount. Scott led Nelson by more than 56,000 votes on election night Nov. 6, but that lead had fallen to 12,603 on Thursday afternoon, when the state officially declared a manual recount would occur.
County election officials across the state now have until Sunday to review overvotes and undervotes, ballots that a machine marked as having too many or too few selections in the race. Officials will seek to interpret the intent of the voters based on the markings they left on the ballots, a scenario that harkens back to Florida’s 2000 presidential recount and notorious hanging chads.
The gubernatorial contest between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis won’t proceed to a manual recount, as the Thursday results showed DeSantis holding a secure lead of nearly 34,000 votes. DeSantis’s lead had held steady throughout the past week.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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