FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The recount of Florida's razor-thin Senate and gubernatorial races got off to a bumpy start with some mishaps and litigation Sunday.
In Broward County, the recount was delayed for several hours Sunday morning because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. That prompted the Republican Party to slam the county's supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, for "incompetence and gross mismanagement."
The county is emerging as the epicenter of controversy in the recount. Broward officials said they mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected, mostly because the signature on the return envelope did not match the one on file. It is a problem that appears impossible to fix because the ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots. Snipes said it would be unfair to throw out all the ballots.
Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate, filed suit in a circuit court later Sunday against Snipes. The suit seeks a judge's order that law enforcement agents impound and secure all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots "when not in use until such time as any recounts."
The lawsuit said Snipes repeatedly failed to account for the number of ballots left to be counted, "obfuscated her ballot processing procedures" and failed to report results regularly as required by law.
In Palm Beach County, the supervisor of elections said she doesn't believe her department will be able to meet the Thursday deadline to complete the recount.
Unofficial results show that Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 0.41 of a percentage point in the election for governor. In the Senate race, Scott's lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is 0.14 of a percentage point.
State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 of a percentage point. Once completed, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or below, a hand recount will be ordered.
State officials said they weren't aware of any other time either a race for governor or U.S. Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.
As the recount unfolded, Republicans urged their Democratic opponents to give up and allow the state to move on. Scott said Sunday that Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by noncitizens to count, pointing to a Nelson lawyer objecting to Palm Beach County's rejection of one provisional ballot because it was cast by a noncitizen.
"He is trying to commit fraud to win this election," Scott told Fox News. "Bill Nelson's a sore loser. He's been in politics way too long."
Nelson's campaign issued a statement Sunday saying their lawyer wasn't authorized to object to the ballot's rejection as "Non-citizens cannot vote in US elections."
In Fort Lauderdale, Gillum appeared at a predominantly black church Sunday evening, telling an overflow crowd that voter disenfranchisement isn't just about being blocked from the polling booth. He said it also includes absentee ballots not being counted and ballots where "a volunteer may have the option of looking at that ballot and deciding that vote is null and void" because of a mismatched signature.
The fact that President Donald Trump and Scott "are fighting like you know what to stop the vote count, that ought to tell you something," Gillum said. "They don't get to shut down the process because they're not winning."
Gillum and Nelson have argued each vote should be counted and the process allowed to take its course. Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud.
Georgia, Arizona
In Georgia, another lawsuit has been filed in the state's unsettled race for governor.
Democrat Stacey Abrams' campaign went to federal court Sunday asking a judge to delay vote certifications by one day until Wednesday. It also asks a judge to require that officials count any votes that were rejected improperly.
The suit points to alleged problems with provisional and absentee votes in populous DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in metro Atlanta.
Republican Brian Kemp's campaign didn't have any immediate comment. It has previously said it's numerically impossible for Abrams to force a runoff by closing his lead of nearly 59,000 votes.
The Abrams campaign contends thousands of uncounted votes could change the result.
In Arizona, retiring Republican Senator Jeff Flake rejected a suggestion by an official of his own party that there's fraud in the too-close-to-call race to succeed him.
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who trailed through much of election night, has pulled out to a 30,310-vote edge over Republican Representative Martha McSally, according to the Arizona Secretary of State.
Calvin Moore, a regional communications director for the National Republican Senate Committee, cited a Fox News story in a Saturday tweet suggesting that a county election official was "destroying evidence to cook the books" for Sinema.
Flake responded to Moore's tweet with a Twitter posting of his own on Sunday, saying "There is no evidence of election officials 'cooking the books' in Arizona" and that "such careless language undermines confidence in our democratic institutions."
Information for this article was contributed by Kelli Kennedy, Terry Spencer, Tamara Lush, Brendan Farrington and other staff members of The Associated Press; and by Mark Niquette and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/12/2018