Florida Senate race: Rick Scott vs. Bill Nelson

Brenda Snipes — the controversial Broward County, Florida, elections supervisor who oversaw recent recounts for governor and Senate — resigned from her position on November 19, saying that she was “ready to pass the torch” and would leave her job on January 4, 2019.

But on December 1, Snipes rescinded her resignation after Republican Gov. Rick Scott suspended her without pay and appointed a replacement. In a statement, Snipes’s attorney said: “We believe these actions are malicious, we believe that the allegations that are set forth in the governor’s executive order are done for the purposes of embarrassing Dr. Snipes — embarrassing her and tarnishing her record — and we will be fighting this.”

Over the weekend, the recount in Florida’s Senate race ended. Republican Rick Scott, who’s currently the governor of Florida, beat Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson by a mere 10,033 votes — a razor-thin margin in an election where more than 8.1 million votes were counted.

But if people with felony records could have voted in the state this year, Nelson would have had a very good chance of remaining in the Senate.

There is no evidence of voter fraud in Florida. But as Republicans face the increasing possibility that last week’s midterm elections didn’t turn out as great for them as they initially thought, GOP officials are claiming voter fraud anyway.

Over the past week, the vote count has narrowed in Florida’s gubernatorial and Senate races. On Wednesday morning, Republican Ron DeSantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum in the governor’s race by nearly 72,000 votes, and Republican Rick Scott led Democrat Bill Nelson by around 51,000 votes. That’s now changed: In the final count, DeSantis only led Gillum by less than 34,000 votes, and Scott led Nelson by less than 13,000 votes. Both of the tallies are close enough that a recount is underway — and a recount could very well flip the results.

Florida, America’s most notorious swing state, is headed for a recount in its major statewide elections for both the Senate and the governorship, where Republicans are narrowly leading.

The races between Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson for US Senate and between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum for governor remain too close to call after Tuesday’s election. Under Florida state law, a machine recount is triggered if the margin of victory is equal or less than 0.5 percent, while a manual recount is triggered if it’s less than 0.25 percent.

President Donald Trump is now claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are carrying out widespread voter fraud to steal the US Senate election in Florida between Republican Rick Scott and Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.

It began with Trump’s tweet on Thursday night that law enforcement is looking into “Election Fraud” in the state, claiming that “Florida voted for Rick Scott!” He later added, “Rick Scott was up by 50,000+ votes on Election Day, now they ‘found’ many votes and he is only up 15,000 votes. ‘The Broward [County] Effect.’ How come they never find Republican votes?”

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is asking for a recount in his attempt to hold on to his Florida seat in the US Senate.

With all precincts reporting on Wednesday morning, Republican Gov. Rick Scott has a small lead. According to the New York Times, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Scott has a less than 35,000-vote lead over Nelson, with 50.2 percent of the vote compared to Nelson’s 49.8 percent of the vote.