The midterm elections on Tuesday confirmed that Florida is a state where elections are decided by a narrow margin and consequently days can pass without a winner being declared, as happens with a key position in the Senate.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, who is hoping for a fourth term and, according to updated data, was about 30,161 votes (0.38 points) behind Republican candidate Rick Scott, today requested that the electoral law be applied and a recount made of the more than 8.1 million votes cast.
Nelson, 76, who at no time has accepted his defeat, although President Donald Trump has declared Scott Scott, current governor of Florida, the winner, stressed that the law marks that when there is a margin of less than 0.5 points, as In this case, it is necessary to verify the scrutiny.
The “deadline is Saturday at noon, or maybe more in certain circumstances,” so that election supervisors can determine if the count “proceeds in accordance with the law,” the senator added.
In the meantime, your campaign team will contact voters whose ballots were not counted, for example, due to lack of identification or a matching address.
“We hope that the supervisors, regardless of their party affiliation, comply with their constitutional obligations,” said Marc Elias, Nelson’s campaign lawyer.
Scott, who last night appeared before his followers in Naples (southeast of Florida) and did not dare to claim victory, although he assured that he will be in the Senate partially renewed in the mid-term presidential elections, knows what it is to win for a short margin.
He was elected governor in 2010 with an advantage of 61,000 votes (1.2 percentage points) over Democrat Alex Synk, and re-elected in 2014, when he beat Democrat Charlie Christ by 64,000 votes (1%).
The last polls published before the appointment with the polls placed this millionaire entrepreneur – friend of Donald Trump who has made the creation of employment and the lowering of taxes his flag – slightly behind Nelson, whom he accuses of not having ” done nothing “during his long career in Congress.
But the polls were wrong in the two main positions at stake in Florida in the midterm elections.
He also Republican and sponsored by Trump Ron DeSantis, who will be the new governor of Florida, also managed to turn the polls that placed him behind Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, who wanted to be the first African-American in the Governorate of ” Sunny state “.
The victory was adjusted (about 80,000 votes apart), but Gillum accepted his defeat and DeSantis was proclaimed winner.
Other disputed races ended with Democratic victories in two seats in the House of Representatives in districts of South Florida that were under the control of Cuban-American republicans.
The Democratic effort to give a blow to Trump in these elections had results especially in the House of Representatives, whose control could recover, and women had a leading role in that achievement, also in Florida.
Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health of the Clinton Administration and former president of the University of Miami, and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, born in Ecuador and former associate dean of the School of Medicine of the Florida International University (FIU), will be the representatives in the Lower house of two districts of South Florida where the Cuban community has an important weight.
Except for Nelson, the protagonists of the last elections in Florida remain silent today, with their accounts on social networks inactive for hours, unlike during the long, hard and expensive election campaign.
Melvin Felix, head of campaign of Mucarsel-Powell, told Efe that the congresswoman, one of the surprises of these elections, will dedicate the day today to rest with her husband, Robert, and their three children, Willow, Jude and Siena .
As an example of the polarization of the political landscape in Florida, today it was known that in Monroe County, in the extreme south of the state, there was only one vote of difference between Scott and Nelson: 18,021 for the Republican and 18,020 for the Democrat.
This equality refers to the agonizing recount of the 2000 presidential elections, in which the voting system of Florida took more than seven weeks to announce that Republican George W. Bush had won the Democrat Al Gore by 537 votes in this state. and, consequently, the White House.
