November 10, 2018

Florida’s Secretary of State Just Ordered an Unprecedented Double Recount

Andrew Gillum withdraws his concession as Trump makes baseless claims of voter fraud.

Andrew Gillum, Florida's Democratic candidate for governor, withdraws his concession at a news conference in Tallahassee on Saturday. Steve Cannon/AP

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Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Detzner is ordering an unprecedented recount of both the state’s Senate and governor’s races. Tallahassee Mayor and Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum responded by withdrawing his concession to Republican Ron DeSantis.

Both races are within the 0.5 percent margin that triggers an automatic machine recount under Florida law. DeSantis is leading Gillum by 33,684 votes, or 0.41 points. Gov. Rick Scott is currently leading Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) by about 12,562 votes, only 0.15 percent of the more than 8 million ballots cast. Florida law requires a hand recount if the Senate race remains within 0.25 percentage points after the initial recount.

President Donald Trump and Scott have baselessly claimed that Democrats are trying to steal the election. Trump wrote six tweets on Friday that questioned the integrity of the Florida elections. Trump tweeted about the Florida race again on Saturday:

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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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