Florida Recount: ‘Bill Nelson Needs a Miracle’ to Beat Rick Scott
Numbers stacked against Nelson.
Marc Caputo at Politico penned a piece last night that has some harsh realities for incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson as the recount in Florida continues.
Despite all the lawsuits Nelson has filed, experts believe he will come up short to Republican Governor Rick Scott.
Caputo wrote:
Nelson has two major problems, experts say: Nelson’s lawsuits were filed so late and courts generally frown on last-minute post-election changes, and the margin he trails Scott by is so big that even expanding the pool of available ballots to count makes it highly unlikely that Nelson could make up enough ground.
“A royal flush is right on the money. Nelson would have to have a perfect hand,” said Michael Morley, a Florida State University election law professor, echoing two other experts who spoke to POLITICO.
“He would have to win in every case. And even then, it would not seem to be enough to change the outcome,” Morley said. “One study that I’ve seen shows that in the 21st Century, there have only been three statewide races that have had their results changed as a result of a recount. And in each of those races, the margins were in the hundreds, not more than 12,000.”
Scott leads Nelson by 12,000 votes, which is a 0.15% advantage. The state requires at the most a 0.25% deficit in order to have a manual recount.
Even CNN crunched the numbers and wrote that “Bill Nelson needs a miracle” to come out a winner against Scott:
According to a FairVote database of statewide recounts from 2000 to 2015, the average recount moves the margin by 0.02 points. Nelson needs the margin to move by nearly eight times as much.
The recount with the largest shift was the Vermont Auditor of Accounts race in 2006. The margin shifted in that by 0.11 points, which is still less than what Nelson needs.
CNN noted that only “3 of the 27 elections (11%) examined by FairVote” changed the loser to a winner. Former Democrat Sen. Al Franken won his 2008 seat after a recount, but those numbers came out differently than Nelson’s. Republican Norm Coleman only had a 215 vote lead, which is 0.01 points. Franken won by 225 votes (less than 0.01 points). That means the shift involved only 440 votes or less than 0.02 points.”
Florida rejected 7,871 votes for “voter error,” including “mismatched signatures on the ballots compared to what’s on file with the state.” Out of those ballots:
- 35% Republicans
- 36% Democrats
- 29% independents
The state rejected 10,186 ballots because the envelopes arrived unsigned. Out of those ballots:
- 31% Republicans
- 44% Democrats
- 24% independents
Caputo mentioned that “Nelson would have to win 85 percent of them statewide in an election where he couldn’t get 50 percent of the vote so far.” Caputo continued:
On Wednesday, the state’s elections division director provided more specificity when she testified in Nelson’s signature mismatch suit by revealing that 3,688 mail-in absentee ballots and another 93 provisional ballots were rejected for mismatches by 45 counties, a count that didn’t include the large counties of Miami-Dade or Duval.
“It’s a rabbit out of a hat. But there’s not enough rabbit,” one Republican lawyer involved in the recount who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity said of Nelson’s strategy and predicament.
The lawsuit over mismatched signatures for absentee ballots was heard Wednesday in federal court in Tallahassee. Nelson’s campaign has also sued over deadlines for the receipt of absentee ballots, standards for divining voter intent and the deadline to finish the recount.
Lawsuits
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has asked Nelson to stop the lawsuits.
Nelson will likely come up short in recount battle against Scott via @POLITICO for iOS. Senator NELSON, please stop the lawsuits, let the votes be accounted according to Florida law and accept the results. Don’t tarnish your years of service to Florida. pic.twitter.com/ymKoskQzCr
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) November 14, 2018
Nelson has filed lawsuits to extend the deadlines, stop “election officials from rejecting unconventionally marked ballots,” and to get “copies of vote-by-mail ballots received via email or fax.”
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Comments
Nelson looks ready for the dogtrack and the 3:00 pm dinner buffet. Time to retire.
Not a miracle. Just CORRUPT DEMOCRAT Supervisors of Election.
The Democrat Mantra – “Count every vote” (twice if its for a Democrat). Found ballots that can’t be authenticated. Give me a break.
More like their mantra is count every vote and see how many need to be manufactured to steal the election.
six times if its for Hillary
“Caputo mentioned that “Nelson would have to win 85 percent of them statewide in an election where he couldn’t get 50 percent of the vote so far.””
So defines the mission. Now to manufacture the “miracle”. A variation on the “Mueller Principle”. Math is not a law.
Nelson may need a miracle. While that won’t happen, we all know he certainly will receive a couple thousand more “discovered” ballots in Broward County as the recounts continue to drag onward.
The math troubles me on this – well, not the math, but those who want “every vote counted” only count D votes. The “voter error” votes are neck and neck … if of those 7,871 votes Scott got 35% and Nelson 36%, the difference is just 1% which means Nelson gains only 79 votes on Scott’s lead. Likewise the unsigned votes, nelson gains just 13% (44% – 31%) of 10,186 votes, or 1,324 votes. All together, Nelson picks up 1,403 votes and Scott still wins by 10,597 votes.
Or are the D’s looking to credit themselves with votes they refuse to credit to an R?
The Democrats “found” more than 40K votes after the election, which went 84% for the Democrats on a straight ballot. The votes were provisional ballots and mail ins that were opened in secret. Now no one can find the provisional votes that were “found” and the receipt logs for the mail ins appears to be altered. The whole thing stinks, and Ms Snipes has vet to explain why thousands of mail in votes were not tabulated when they arrived ( within 45 minutes) as the rules provide.
Fraud. Eliminate the fraud and Scott wins.
OMG! I see a ballot partially sticking out of a car trunk In Ft. Lauderdale! What do you suppose is in that trunk? And it has a MN license tag on it!
Florida rejected 7,871 votes for “voter error,” including “mismatched signatures on the ballots compared to what’s on file with the state.” Out of those ballots:
35% Republicans
36% Democrats
29% independents
The party registrations are significant only if this is on the level. If fraudulent mail-in votes are involved, the party registration of the voter whose vote is being faked is not an indicator of what his vote is likely to be.
The actual vote on these ballots (i.e, are they all for the Dem?) would tell us something about whether this is just another bit of D’rat chicanery. But associating the voter’s name with his vote—real or fake—kills that whole “secret ballot” thing, so we won’t get that information.
IMHO the Lefty lawyers know they can’t salvage a Nelson win. Instead they want to get favorable court rulings to create a legal precedent for the next recount, overturning state laws via judicial fiat.
If you can’t win at the ballot box, win in court. If you cant win in court make enough of a mess of the prosses to claim the election was illegitimate.
The GOP let this vote fraud happen.
They’ve known of Florida corruption since 2000.
What are we going to do differently this time?
“Nelson would have to win 85 percent of them statewide in an election where he couldn’t get 50 percent of the vote so far”
He got 75% of the initial 80,000 “missing” ballots. That’s the only reason he’s close enough to demand a recount. I’m sure the voting factories in Palm Beach and Broward counties can do it.