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Nov. 18, 2018 / 5:58 PM GMT
By Jonathan Allen
MIAMI — Republican Rick Scott moved one giant step closer to officially ousting Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., when Florida’s secretary of state reported Sunday that a hand recount left Scott with a 10,033-vote advantage.
With no legal challenges or recounts remaining, Nelson is scheduled to give a public statement at 3 p.m. ET.
Scott had held a 12,603-vote edge after a machine recount wrapped up earlier in the week, meaning the county-by-county manual version narrowed the gap by 2,570 votes.
The state’s 67 counties had to meet a 12 p.m. Sunday deadline to have their results counted.
Scott’s victory would give Senate Republicans 52 seats in the Senate and Democrats 47 seats, pending the outcome of a Mississippi special election that will be decided Nov. 27.
Democrats originally had hoped that Broward County, where there were roughly 30,000 ballots on which machines either picked up multiple votes on the same ballot for the Senate race or no vote at all in that contest — known as “overvotes” and “undervotes.”
They thought it was possible that the machines had erred and simply not read valid votes for the Senate race correctly.
But Broward County updated its website shortly before noon Sunday with new numbers showing that voters had simply not picked a candidate in the race — perhaps due to the design of the ballot.
After the hand recount, Nelson had picked up 495 votes in Broward compared to the totals originally submitted to the secretary of state, and Scott had added 142 votes.
In the days after the Nov. 6 election, Democrats mounted a wide-ranging legal challenge to Florida election laws and the actions of state officials in what they said was an effort to ensure that every vote was counted.
But after nearly two weeks of court rulings, a machine recount and a hand recount, they appeared to have no recourse left.