2018 Elections | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 3
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2018 Elections Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 14, 2018 32 Comments
Why, Florida? WHY?! Just when it looked like Palm Beach County had better sailing than Broward County, news comes out that aging equipment has overheated and caused mismatched results. From The Miami Herald:
The county’s decade-old ballot-counting machines overheated and gave incorrect totals, forcing the county to restart its recount of about 175,000 early votes, supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Tuesday night.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 13, 2018 22 Comments
A judge has extended the recount in Palm Beach County to November 20. The original deadline was this Thursday. From The Palm Beach Post:
The order would include extending the recounting of votes in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott, the governor’s race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum, the race for agriculture commissioner between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell, and the race for state House District 89 between Democrat Jim Bonfiglio and Republican Mike Caruso.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 13, 2018 15 Comments
I detailed yesterday how the recount in the Florida senate and governor races have become messy, especially in Broward County. Now it looks like election officials may have to recount votes by hand instead if the results are too tight. Incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson has also demanded that his opponent Governor Rick Scott recuse himself from the recount.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 13, 2018 28 Comments
On November 5, Common Cause Georgia filed a lawsuit that accused Georgia governor candidate Brian Kemp, who held the office of secretary of state until he resigned last week, "of acting recklessly after a vulnerability in Georgia’s voter registration database was exposed shortly before the election." The organization claimed that Kemp's "actions increased the risk that eligible voters could be illegally removed from the voter registration database or have registration information illegally altered." Judge Amy Totenberg of the Federal District Court in Atlanta ordered officials to wait until Friday to certify the governor's race and do all they can to protect provisional ballots.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 12, 2018 37 Comments
The recount in Florida has to finish by Thursday, November 15, but officials in Palm Beach County claimed that the recount cannot possibly end by then. It doesn't help that President Donald Trump has demanded officials halt the recount while both sides continue to demean each other, especially in Broward County, whose recount has turned into a massive dumpster fire. Republican Gov. Rick Scott still leads incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson by 12,562 votes (.15%). Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 33,684 votes (.41%)

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 11, 2018 22 Comments
As the mandatory recount kicks off in Florida, insults and accusations fly between Democrats and Republicans. As of Sunday morning, Governor Rick Scott (R) leads Senator Bill Nelson (D) by 12,562 votes (by 0.15%) in the Senate race.  Representative Ron DeSantis (R) leads Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum by 33,684 votes (by  0.41%)) in the gubernatorial race.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 10, 2018 51 Comments
Attorneys for Democrat candidate for Florida governor Andrew Gillum and Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) objected Saturday to the exclusion of a vote by a non-citizen. Despite their objections, the vote was not counted, and the Nelson campaign has disavowed their own attorney, claiming that the attorney "was not authorized" to make such a decision and iterating that "non-citizens cannot vote in U.S. elections.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 10, 2018 28 Comments
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.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 09, 2018 63 Comments
It's never over. During my time in private law practice, time and time again I saw cases that were lost converted into wins at the last second when the 'winning' attorney wasn't paying attention.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 09, 2018 47 Comments
The Florida elections remain a mess. The heat has turned up even more since Governor Rick Scott announced last night he and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have decided to sue Broward County and Palm Beach County. Scott is in a tight race with incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Now it looks like Nelson has decided to sue "to extend the deadline for local election offices to turn in vote counts."

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 09, 2018 4 Comments
Lakeisha Sorey at Miramar Elementary School in Broward County found a provisional ballot box inside a closet. Sorey did not touch it in order to avoid tampering. She phoned state Rep. Shevrin Jones (D) and the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office. The woman at the office told Sorey the box probably contained blank ballots, but Sorey mentioned the box is locked.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 09, 2018 14 Comments
As election officials are counting chads once more in Florida and in Arizona in search of the victor in the US senate race, there is a district in California that is poised to make history once all the mail-in numbers come in. Young Kim, the Republican candidate, is likely be the first Korean-American woman elected to the US Congress once the final numbers are crunched.
California’s Congressional District 39 was one of the tightest races of the 2018 midterm elections, and even with the votes tallied, the outcome remains far from clear.