From The Hill:
In Florida, an automatic machine recount is triggered if two candidates are within 0.5 points of one another. If the candidates are within 0.25 points of one another after that machine recount is conducted, a hand recount is triggered.
Sarah Revell, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of State, confirmed on Saturday that Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) had ordered recounts in the three races.
“The first unofficial set of returns for the U.S. Senate, Governor and Commissioner of Agriculture races has met the statutory threshold to trigger a machine recount,” Revell said in an email. “As required under Florida law, a statewide machine recount has been ordered by the Secretary of State.”
Scott has a slight lead over Nelson while DeSantis has a much larger one.
Republicans have been fighting for the last couple of days to get the election supervisors in two Democratic strongholds, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, to comply with the law and the reporting requirements.
Two judges handed Scott key legal wins in those cases on Friday. In Broward, Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ordered the county’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, to turn over voter information, including how many people cast ballots and how many votes remained to be counted.
Meanwhile, in Palm Beach, Judge Krista Marx ordered the county supervisor of elections, Susan Bucher, to release certain ballots that had been deemed defective to the canvassing board for final review.
The race for agriculture commissioner is also headed for a recount. Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell are separated by a scant 0.06 percentage points — a little more than 5,300 votes.
While that race hasn’t drawn the outsize national attention that Florida’s Senate and gubernatorial races have, agriculture commissioner is an influential, Cabinet-level position in the state with sweeping responsibilities.
Caldwell followed in Scott’s footsteps on Friday, filing his own lawsuit against Snipes, asking that a court determine whether she illegally counted ballots received after polls closed on Tuesday.
The machine recount has to be in by Nov. 15, and then a hand recount, if triggered would have to be in by Nov. 18 so that the results could be certified by Nov. 20.
