Republicans Send Massive Team to Florida as Second Recount Begins
The Republican National Committee has sent a team of around 100 employees from Washington, D.C., down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, amid the ongoing recount from the Nov. 6 midterm elections, according to an RNC staffer.
The move comes while multiple elections have yet to be decided, as embattled Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes manages the election ballot recount, an RNC staffer told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Days after the midterms ended, election supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach counties were still adding votes to the tally, causing both Democrats and Republicans to become frustrated.
Florida ordered a hand recount Thursday afternoon, the first-ever statewide recount done by hand, according to The Miami Herald.
Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson sued the Florida Department of State on Monday, in a bid to have election supervisors include mail-in ballots that were delivered after the polls closed on Nov. 6.
Nelson was behind by more than 10,000 votes in the Senate vote, but showed up at a news conference on Tuesday next to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill.
Nelson’s opponent, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, was also on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, even though the race has not been called, for the start of the Senate’s freshman orientation.
“As far as we’re concerned, he is the senator-elect,” Scott’s campaign spokesman Chris Hartline told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday. “There’s no reason why he wouldn’t participate in leadership elections and other orientation activities,” adding it was “mathematically impossible” for Nelson to win.
Former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also weighed in on the issue, calling for Snipes’s resignation.
“There is no question that Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts, undermining Floridians’ confidence in our electoral process,” Bush said in a tweet Monday.
Even President Donald Trump has commented on the ongoing recount.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump said in a tweet Monday. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Florida failed to meet the 3 p.m. deadline for the vote count Thursday.
RNC staffers plan on watching the manual recount closely, in case they want to raise any issues with the process. If they see a problem throughout the hand recount, they plan on immediately bringing it up to lawyers who will be present and monitoring the recount.
The deadline for any candidate, voter or taxpayer to challenge the election results in a circuit court is Nov. 30, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
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