quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
The numbers didn't match? What the hell does that mean. This is really disturbing stuff.

Allow me to explain. When they re-ran the ballots, the totals they got did not award Gillum and Nelson their races. As such, the machines 'overheated', and the ballots will need to be re-run again. The machines will continue to 'overheat' until Gillum and Nelson win.

Everyone in Palm Beach and Broward County elections department need to be fired and prosecuted.

what an ongoing mess

A federal judge still hasn't decided whether Palm Beach County has to meet the Thursday 3pm deadline for the recount

https://www.miamiherald.com/ne...rticle221648390.html

That likelihood underlays two standing federal lawsuits seeking to extend the recount window. The lawsuits are both before U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who on Wednesday spent hours weighing a separate Nelson campaign lawsuit to validate thousands of rejected absentee and provisional ballots by overturning the state’s process for matching voter signatures .

the DEMs want to change the rules after the election

After five contentious hours in his Tallahassee courtroom, Walker ended the hearing without a decision. He indicated he’d consider giving voters whose mismatched signatures led canvassing boards to reject their ballots more time to resolve the problems. If he does, it could alter the vote count in the three as-yet decided races, all of which had margins of less than half a percentage point. It could also alter the state’s deadline for elections supervisors to submit their new vote totals.

The lawsuit over rejected ballots is only one of several filed by Nelson’s campaign and its allies to try and tilt the recount in his favor as he trails Scott by more than 12,500 votes. Nelson’s campaign hopes thousands of undervotes and overvotes — ballots where a machine ruled that voters either voted for too many candidates or none at all — will help bridge the gap. But elections experts say it’s unlikely Nelson can pull ahead without successfully altering Florida’s elections laws to broaden the vote pool.

“If you conduct a recount according to the rules on election day, the results are going to be almost identical to what you’ve got on election day. The only thing that is creating a potential for a bigger effect is not just going to the recount process but simultaneously trying to change the rules and have the courts invalidate the rules after the election is held and after the results are all in,” said Michael T. Morley, an assistant professor of law specializing in elections at Florida State University. “Even then it may be not be enough.”.

Walker seemed disinclined Wednesday to legislate from the bench or allow thousands of rejected ballots to stand without further scrutiny. The state explained that more than 3,700 ballots were rejected over mismatched signatures, although that was only from totals provided by 45 counties.

“Why in the world would I say, ‘Count them all,’ without regard for whether they are valid votes?” he asked Nelson’s team of dark-suited attorneys. “My grandfather would say that’s roughly akin to hunting squirrel with a bazooka.”

Walker’s work isn’t done. He is set to hear a Democratic lawsuit Thursday seeking to invalidate the state’s methods for determining “voter intent” on overvotes and undervotes. He’ll also consider a Democratic lawsuit arguing for an extension of Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline.

“Apparently I’m supposed to re-evaluate the entire election code of the state of Florida, one piece at a time. I’ve got it,” Walker said. “This just seems like a really bad way to do this.”

quote:

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker,

Another obama appointee. I hope he does the right thing. If not this could end up going to SCOTUS again.

One judge should not be able to override law to impact elections.

This should be one the easiest decisions this judge has ever made. Here's what he should do:

Rule according to the laws that are on the books!

Case closed.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:

quote:

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker,

Another obama appointee. I hope he does the right thing. If not this could end up going to SCOTUS again.

One judge should not be able to override law to impact elections.

This judge is being asked to change the rules (established by election law) after the election is over. He can't do that, and I hope he knows it. If he attempts to ignore the law, then he's totally corrupt and doesn't belong on the bench. This one should be very easy for even a corrupt mouth breather.

The judge gave voters with mismatched signatures a chance to correct their signature effort until Saturday. WTF. Election laws a like the tide, they change twice a day.

https://hotair.com/archives/20...oward-wraps-recount/

Florida’s election recount was thrown once more into uncertainty Thursday when a federal judge ruled that thousands of voters whose mail-in and provisional ballots were rejected because of issues with their signatures will have two more days to resolve the problems and possibly have their votes counted.

The late-night decision by U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee came just hours ahead of 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon deadline for elections officials to complete a machine recount. In the too-close-to-call Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by fewer than 13,000 votes. …

Walker’s decision would affect Floridians who cast their ballots by mail, or voted provisionally, but whose signatures did not match records maintained by the state. State officials said out of 47 of the 67 counties reporting, there were 3,781 ballots rejected for mismatched signatures, including 467 in Orange County.

Incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson’s campaign wanted to have the court remove the signature requirement altogether

Both sides could appeal this decision, and the Orlando Sentinel seems to think Scott will do so

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Broward County:

After days of being in the national spotlight – and being criticized by everyone from candidates to protesters from both major political parties – Broward County completed their machine recount of votes for three offices in the 2018 election ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Workers put the last ballots to be counted through machines at election headquarters in Lauderhill around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night. Officials will spend the remaining time before the 3 p.m. deadline Thursday going through ballots that were mailed in or not able to be read by the machines.

Walker’s ruling means Broward will have to wait for Saturday to close out their counting of provisional and mail-in ballots

"He believes, I believe, he’s won a majority of the votes,..."

What he really meant to say, "He believes, I believe, he's stolen a majority of the votes from the recount!"
"I Believe in Voting Fraud and Cheating in Elections to help Democrats to stay and get power."


Schumer: Nelson and I Believe ‘He’s Won a Majority of the Votes,’ I Think ‘He Has a Very Good Chance’ of Winning

During a press conference on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) “has a very good chance” of winning. Schumer added that both he and Nelson believe “he’s won a majority” in Florida.

Schumer said, “[I]f Bill Nelson wins, which I believe he has a very good chance of doing, we’ll be even.”

He later added, “Bill Nelson is strong as could be. He believes, I believe, he’s won a majority of the votes, and as long as they’re counted, he will continue being senator from Florida. The — President Trump and Governor Scott have just lied. They’ve said there’s fraud when their own Republican officials in Florida have said there’s no fraud. They’re trying to shut down the election. Because they’re afraid of the consequences if they don’t, in other words, a Nelson victory. That’s what Bill believes. That’s what I believe.”

https://www.breitbart.com/vide...d-chance-of-winning/

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:

quote:

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker,

Another obama appointee. I hope he does the right thing. If not this could end up going to SCOTUS again.

One judge should not be able to override law to impact elections.

This judge is being asked to change the rules (established by election law) after the election is over. He can't do that, and I hope he knows it. If he attempts to ignore the law, then he's totally corrupt and doesn't belong on the bench. This one should be very easy for even a corrupt mouth breather.

I agree. BUT, there was major corruption in Broward County the last election with Snipes at the helm and nobody did anything about it OR HER. I believe a bunch of absentee ballots got lost or something to that effect in the last election. That's the problem, the Republicans should have handled her then.

quote:

Schumer said, “[I]f Bill Nelson wins, which I believe he has a very good chance of doing, we’ll be even.”

So Schumer already knows the outcome of the Mississippi runoff?

Now it is being reported that in Broward County absentee ballots were dropped off at a prison two days after the election on November 8. Borward County official said that was because the inmates claimed they never got their absentee ballots in the mail. Yet many are still saying no corruption.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.c...ates-after-election/

Breaking Report: Broward County Deputy Says Civil Rights Attorneys Were Handing Out Absentee Ballots to Inmates AFTER ELECTION? (Update)

The Broward County Deputy explained that on Thursday November 8, 2018, after the midterm election, absentee ballots were delivered to the jail for the inmates and the deputies were told to pass them out.
Civil rights attorneys arrived on last Thursday and demanded to see the inmates. They were not the inmates personal attorneys of record. The attorneys wanted to know if the inmates had received their absentee ballots in the mail. As these attorneys were not the inmates’ attorneys of record, Sheriff Scott Israel should not have granted them access to the inmates. Protocol would have the attorneys sign into the jail, yet there is no record...........

I would think this would get fast tracked to the SCOTUS, if the FL SC does not rule correctly, and then the SCOTUS will either halt the recount or toss out all votes not cast and counted by the deadline, which I think is FL law. Does that sound right? Sounds to me like the more FL officials screw this up, the more likely it is to end with the numbers we had on election night.

I am deeply ashamed to say that I was born in Broward county. It's the first time that I have ever been ashamed of where I'm from. I was born way before I95 was completed and the thieves followed it down and moved in.

^^^ I don't think you have anything to be ashamed of. You didn't cause the problem and you aren't part of it. If anything, your experience of what that County was once like can be shared with your friends, family and acquaintances as a lesson and as a warning. Cheer up!

sounds like 20 Nov is the date to put this all to bed

https://thehill.com/homenews/c...machine-recount-ends

The results of Florida's Senate and governor races hang in the balance Thursday as the state gears up to announce the outcomes of machine recounts in both contests following a 3 p.m. deadline on Thursday.

At the time the recount was called, Scott led by just over 12,500 votes, or about 0.15 percentage points.

If that margin holds, it will trigger a hand recount given that Florida law mandates manual tabulations for any contest where the candidates are separated by less than 0.25 percentage points.

Any hand recount would need to be completed by Sunday, in time for a Nov. 20 deadline for state officials to certify the final election results.

A manual recount does not mean that every ballot is counted by hand. Instead, local election officials will sort through so-called overvotes and undervotes – ballots on which voters marked either more or fewer than the maximum number of selections allowed.

Meanwhile, in the race for governor, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) trailed former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) by about 33,000 votes, or 0.41 points. Unless that margin narrows to 0.25 points or less, a hand recount will not be ordered.

quote:

A manual recount does not mean that every ballot is counted by hand. Instead, local election officials will sort through so-called overvotes and undervotes – ballots on which voters marked either more or fewer than the maximum number of selections allowed.

And then what? I hope there are representatives from both sides watching over every single ballot. It had earlier been reported that Broward county alone had about 20,000 instances of ballots where there was a vote for governor but not for senator.

https://www.floridatoday.com/s...n-gillum/1956447002/



Who will represent Florida in the U.S. Senate for the next six years likely will be decided by the examination of thousands of ballots in Broward County that initially recorded no votes in the Senate race.

"Undervotes," where a voter opts not to choose any candidate in a race do happen, but rarely in such high profile races. In fact, the first race to appear on a ballot — in this case, the Senate race — generally draws the highest number of votes.

But in Broward, just 683,963 votes have been reported in the Senate race compared with 708,955 in the governor's race.

Some of that difference could be explained by the enthusiasm of supporters of Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum. But the other statewide races for attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner also showed thousands of more votes than the Senate race.

Elections experts say such an outcome is highly unusual.


With Republican challenger Gov. Rick Scott leading Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson by just 12,562 votes, a recount examination of those undervotes could decide the outcome of the race.


There are two likely scenarios to explain the undervotes: Machine error or a poorly designed ballot that made it easy to overlook the Senate race.

The former would benefit Nelson; the latter, Scott.

If thousands of more people voted in Senate race, but faulty machines didn't tabulate those votes, those votes will be tallied in next week's recounts. Since Nelson captured 69 percent of the vote in Broward, such a move would likely cut deeply into Scott's lead and possibly flip it.

But the second possibility is the way the ballot was designed caused thousands of voters to overlook the Senate race.

The Senate race was the first one on the ballot and appeared in the lower left corner of the ballot just below the voting instructions. Many voters could have skipped over the Senate race thinking it was part of the instructions and proceeded directly to the governor's race, which was at the top of the center column of the ballot.

Bolstering that possibility is the voting patterns in the Broward portion of the 24th Congressional district, which also includes part of Miami-Dade County.

Voters there had an even higher rate of undervotes than in other parts of the county.

Since the congressional race in the district was uncontested it didn't appear on the ballot leaving the Senate race the sole contest in the lower left hand corner of the ballot, potentially making it even easier to overlook.

If the recount finds that there truly were no votes cast in that race, it seems highly unlikely that the Nelson would be able to make up enough votes to overcome Scott's lead.

State law requires an automatic machine recount of ballots in races where the margin of victory is within 0.5 percentage points. The preliminary totals reported to the state have Scott leading by 0.15 percentage points.

In a machine recount, all ballots are fed into high-speed tabulating machines to double-check the initial reported vote tallies. Machine recounts have to be completed by Thursday.

If the Broward undervote was caused by machine errors, that would likely be caught by the machine recount. If the machine recount shows a margin higher than 0.25 percent, that is the end of the process and whoever has the most votes at the point would win, barring any lawsuits that might question the process.

If the machine recount produces a margin within 0.25 percent, election officials go forward with a hand recount.

Any manual recount doesn't mean that election officials would look at each of the more than 8 million ballots cast in the state. Instead, they would be examining ballots that tabulation machines said had "overvotes" or "undervotes" in the contested race.

An overvote occurs when the tabulating machine believes a voter cast more than one vote in a certain race. In some cases, voters do fill out more than one bubble for a race. Such "true" overvotes are not counted.

But sometimes a stray pen mark or other voter error can cause the tabulation machines to register an overvote. In such cases, where the voter intent is clear from the ballot, the vote is counted.

Still, it has hard to imagine a scenario where Nelson would be able to close a gap of more than 12,000 votes based on such voter errors.

The manual recount must be completed by Nov. 18.

https://hotair.com/archives/20...sh-recount-deadline/

Palm Beach did not get the recount done by 3 pm today.

Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Saturday’s vote tallies will stand in Palm Beach County as her office was unable to complete the recount because of malfunctioning vote-counting machines.

“It was a heroic effort and we just completed uploading our Saturday results, as was required by law,” Bucher announced Thursday as the 3 p.m. deadline passed.

A manual recount of over and undervotes was set to begin as soon as 4 pm. There are a total of 5,900 such ballots to examine. So what else are we waiting for at this point? Based on the machine recount, it appears the Florida Senate race is headed to a hand recount while the Governor’s race is not

Florida’s secretary of state is expected to call for a hand recount in the Senate race since Scott leads Nelson by just .2 percent — within the .25 percentage legal threshold necessary to trigger the more intensive recount.

The current margin in the governor’s race, however, is outside that margin, at .4 percent.

The Associated Press will not declare winners in the races for Florida governor and Senate until state officials certify the results next week…

Florida counties have until Sunday to report final vote tallies, and state officials would certify those results next Tuesday.



adding:

AP: Federal judge denies request to extend approaching deadline for recounts in tight Florida races for US Senate, governor.

A judge has slapped down Democrats’ request to extend the deadline, saying they have to finish the recount by 3 p.m. Thursday

Separately, another federal judge ruled that voters whose mail-in and provisional ballots went uncounted because election officials were unable to verify their signature must be given the chance to prove their vote’s validity.

The order, issued by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, gives those voters until Saturday at 5 p.m. to show that their ballots were authentic

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If Rick Scott wins, that would put the REP senate at 52.

Then later this month, if REPs win the run off election in Mississippi, that would bump up to 53.

I had thought earlier we had a good shot at 54 and maybe even 55, but that was not to be. (I had thought McSally would win, and we also could knock off Tester)

Why are you ashamed? You had nothing to do with this.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommydogg:
I am deeply ashamed to say that I was born in Broward county. It's the first time that I have ever been ashamed of where I'm from. I was born way before I95 was completed and the thieves followed it down and moved in.

quote:

Originally posted by Ironmike57:
Why are you ashamed? You had nothing to do with this.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommydogg:
I am deeply ashamed to say that I was born in Broward county. It's the first time that I have ever been ashamed of where I'm from. I was born way before I95 was completed and the thieves followed it down and moved in.

I feel the same way as Tommydogg. I'm born, raised, and live in Broward County. It's downright embaressing. It's totally shocking to me how a situation like this can go on and on.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
https://hotair.com/archives/20...sh-recount-deadline/

Palm Beach did not get the recount done by 3 pm today.

Hayzoos Kristo

Big floppy clown shoes