Remember Tuesday night when Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for governor of the state of Florida conceded to the appearance of the race GOP nominee Ron DeSanis. Well, we who follow Florida politics should have known that this race would not yet be over and it might not be.
According to the Associated Press, they are closely monitoring the race for governor, where election officials continue to count absentee ballots.
AP on Tuesday called the election for Republican Ron DeSantis over Democrat Andrew Gillum. DeSantis holds a lead of 38,613 votes out of more than 8.2 million ballots counted — a margin of 0.47 percentage points.
Under Florida law, a recount is mandatory if the margin of the winning candidate is less than 0.5 percentage points when the first unofficial count is verified Saturday by Florida’s secretary of state.
In a statement Thursday, Gillum’s campaign says it underestimated the ballots that still needed to be counted when he conceded.
According to our partners at the Sunshine State News Service, the Gillum camp is following the lead of Sen. Bill Nelson who locked in a recount with Rick Scott for that seat.
Nelson’s recount lawyer predicted Thursday morning that the Democratic incumbent would emerge the victor over Gov. Rick Scott as ballots continue to be examined, particularly in heavily Democratic Palm Beach and Broward counties, in advance of an expected recount coming into play this weekend.
Nelson’s attorney Marc Elias, who has been involved in a number of recounts around the country, pointed to the on-going count of provisional ballots and ballots that may not have been properly scanned in South Florida.
The tabulation of those votes will continue to narrow Scott’s razor-thin lead over Nelson, Elias predicted. Scott’s election night 56,000 victory over Nelson shrank to just over 17,000 votes — within the .25 percent margin that sparks a manual recount — by Thursday afternoon.
“At this point, I’m not prepared to say Sen. Nelson will be in the lead going into the recount, although I would say it’s a jump ball,” Elias said in a conference call with reporters Thursday.
The possibility of yet another recount for Gillum and DeSantis is a strong possibility, with likely a very interesting result. For the record most times election results are not overturned — but this is Florida.
