From joy and relief to oh-em-gee. Florida’s Republican Secretary of State has been forced to order a recount of Tuesday’s election results for both the Senate and the gubernatorial races. The recount is mandatory and automatically triggered when the vote margin is less than 0.5%, as it has become since initial results were announced.
The recount results are due by 3 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 15th, 2018. If there is a margin of less than 0.25% following this recount, there will be a second recount, this time by hand. The results of this second recount (which seems likely in the Senate race since the margin is already less than 0.25%) will be due three days later, on the 18th.
UPDATE [FS]: Gillum has withdrawn his concession only hours after the recount was announced.
We’ve been closely following the Florida Senate and gubernatorial races:
Florida’s secretary of state announced Saturday that there will be recounts in the Senate and gubernatorial races after the races became tight enough to trigger them — amid controversy over the handling of the counts, which has sparked anger from Republicans
Secretary Ken Detzner issued the order after the unofficial results in both races fell within the margin that by law triggers a recount.
The votes in the Senate race between Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and the gubernatorial race between Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis and Democratic mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum, will be recounted.
The mandatory recount occurs if the winning candidate’s margin is less than 0.5 percent. If the margin is less than 0.25 percent, the recount must be done by hand.Both Scott and DeSantis led their races after the midterms on Tuesday, with Gillum conceding to DeSantis. But as the days went on, and more votes were counted, those leads have all but disappeared. Scott’s lead by Saturday afternoon was reduced to 0.15 percent and DeSantis’ was 0.41 percent.
President Trump has weighed in today, stating that his administration is closely watching the recount.
He had previously said that Democrats were “miraculously finding Democrat votes.”
Meanwhile, many Floridians are protesting the recount.
Watch the report:
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