whats left to count in broward and palm beach
UPDATE (Nov. ten, 2018, ii:23p.m.): Since first publishing this article, the Florida secretarial assistant of state has ordered a automobile recount in the U.S. Senate, governor and commissioner of agronomics races every bit unofficial returns have found the results of these races within one-half a percentage point. This automatically triggers a machine count in each race. If the race falls inside a quarter of a percentage point later the automobile recount, each ballot will exist recounted by hand in a much more complex, manual recount.
The Florida U.S. Senate race is even so too shut to call. According to unofficial results on the Florida Department of State website at eleven:45 a.m. Eastern on Friday, Nov. 9, Republican Gov. Rick Scott led Democratic Sen. Nib Nelson by 15,046 votes — or 0.18 percent points. We're watching that margin closely because if it stays about that small-scale, it will trigger a recount. Information technology'southward already narrowed since election night, when Scott initially declared victory with a 56,000-vote lead.
The changing margin is due to continued vote-counting in Broward and Palm Beach counties, two of Florida'due south largest and more Democratic-leaning counties. On Thursday evening, the supervisors of elections in the two counties told the South Florida Sunday Sentinel that vote counting there was by and large complete. Under Florida law, counties have to report unofficial ballot results to the secretary of land by Saturday at noon, but Nelson's campaign is suing to extend that deadline. Scott'southward campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are also suing both counties for not disclosing more information almost the ongoing count, and Scott called on the Florida Department of Police Enforcement to investigate Broward's handling of ballots.
Unusually, the votes tabulated in Broward County so far exhibit a high charge per unit of something called "undervoting," or not voting in all the races on the ballot. Countywide, 26,060 fewer votes were cast in the U.S. Senate race than in the governor race.ane Put another way, turnout in the Senate race was three.vii percent lower than in the gubernatorial race.
Broward Canton'southward undervote charge per unit is manner out of line with every other county in Florida, which exhibited, at most, a 0.8-percent departure. (There is one outlier — the sparsely populated Freedom County — where votes cast in the Senate race were 1 percent higher than in the governor race, merely in that location we're talking virtually a difference of 26 votes, non more than than 26,000, as is the example in Broward.)
To put in perspective what an heart-popping number of undervotes that is, more Broward County residents voted for the down-ballot ramble offices of chief financial officeholder and country agriculture commissioner than U.Southward. Senate — an extremely high-profile election in which $181 million was spent. More often than not, the higher the elected function, the less likely voters are to skip it on their ballots. Something sure does seem off in Broward County; we but don't know what yet.
One possible reason for the discrepancy is poor election pattern. Broward County ballots listed the U.S. Senate race beginning, right later the election instructions. But that pushed the U.Southward. Senate race to the far lesser left of the ballot, where voters may have skimmed over it, while the governor'southward race appears at the tiptop of the ballot'due south center column, immediately to the right of the instructions.
Sun Scout reporters talked with a ballot skillful, who said that some voters may not have noticed the Senate race (peradventure thinking information technology was just function of the ballot instructions) and started filling out their ballot with the governor race instead. That theory is supported by a data consultant who's worked for several political campaigns in Florida, who found that the parts of Broward Canton that fall in the 24th Congressional District did run across college levels of undervoting than other parts of the canton. That might be because the 24th Commune was uncontested, which according to Florida law ways that the congressional race did not appear on the ballot at all. Equally you tin can see in the sample election above, the congressional race would as well appear in the lower-left corner on many ballots, along with the Senate race. In districts where there was no congressional race on the ballot, however, that corner would have looked even emptier, perhaps making it easier for voters to inadvertently skip over the Senate race.
An alternative explanation is that an error with the vote-tabulating machines in Broward Canton caused them to sometimes not read people's votes for U.Southward. Senate. If that's true, we would probably just find out if there is a manual recount. According to Florida law, any election that'south within half a percentage point (as this one currently is) triggers a motorcar recount; then, after the machine recount, if the race is inside a quarter of a percentage bespeak, it goes to a much more than complex manual recount — a.k.a. each ballot is recounted by hand. As long every bit the car recount doesn't change the Senate results likewise much (barring a surprise in the remaining ballots in Broward and Palm Embankment), it looks like that's where we're headed. In improver, Republican former Rep. Ron DeSantis and Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum are separated past just 0.44 points in the governor'southward race, so that could go to a machine recount, also.
But recounts rarely change the outcomes of elections. A FairVote assay establish that the average recount from 2000 to 2015 shifted the election margin by an boilerplate of just 0.02 percentage points. The largest margin swing was 1,247 votes — coincidentally also coming in Florida, in the 2000 presidential race. If Nelson is going to stage a comeback in the Sunshine Land, he'll virtually certainly have to close the gap between him and Scott even more in the next couple of days.
Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/something-looks-weird-in-broward-county-heres-what-we-know-about-a-possible-florida-recount/
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