November 9, 2018

Donald Trump Doesn’t Want All the Votes in Florida to Be Counted

The president said he was sending “much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!”

President Donald Trump is now supporting former Florida Gov. Rick Scott's claims of fraud in the 2018 election.Don Montague/ZUMA Wire

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Three days after votes were cast, the results of elections in Georgia and Florida are still uncertain. But that hasn’t prevented the president from spreading unfounded allegations of voter fraud. On Friday morning, Donald Trump went on a tweetstorm accusing Democrats of manipulating the vote totals in Florida’s Broward County in their favor—without offering any proof to back up his claims. The razor-tight race has also led to accusations by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate currently clinging to a narrow lead in the Senate race, that Democrats are trying to “steal the election.”  

Scott has called for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes and, alongside the National Republican Senatorial Committee, his campaign has filed two emergency lawsuits against election supervisors in both Broward and Palm Beach counties for not complying with state public records laws. Trump criticized incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson for hiring lawyer Marc Elias to represent him in the recount. The president claimed he was sending “much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!”

As of Friday, Scott was up by 15,704 votes, which amounts to a 0.18 percent lead over Nelson. According to Florida law, a recount will be launched Saturday if Scott’s lead is less than 0.5 percentage points. A recount would also lead to a potential shift in the state’s gubernatorial race, which Democratic challenger Andrew Gillum only lost by 38,000 votes. Trump also called out Gillum, who conceded on election night, saying his refusal to accept the loss was “an embarrassment to our Country and to Democracy.” The president falsely stated Nelson had also conceded the election.

In an election cycle with very real concerns over voter suppression, the president took a jab at Democrats, claiming that the missing votes should be blamed on “Russians.”

The president also weighed in on the Georgia gubernatorial election, writing that Democrats need to “move on.” The results of the race are currently pending a count of nearly 25,000 provisional and absentee ballots. Democrat Stacey Abrams is hoping the remaining ballots will be enough to trigger a recount or runoff election. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Abrams’ opponent, resigned from his position yesterday after a federal court questioned whether he should oversee the counting of ballots in his own race. Kemp has been accused of voter suppression after attempting to block the voter registrations of 53,000 predominantly minority voters.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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