In Critical Broward County, Hope for Bill Nelson Fades as Hand Recount Begins

This is where the Democrat needs to make up the most ground. Early indications are he won’t.

The Broward County facility where the hand recount is taking place.Pema Levy/Mother Jones

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As the hand recount in Florida’s contentious Senate election got underway in Broward County, it quickly became clear that Democrats were headed for a bad day. This is the county where incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson needed to net thousands of new votes on Friday. But minutes into the recount, that became unlikely.

Broward County is at the center of Nelson’s hopes for defeating Republican Rick Scott, who currently leads by fewer than 13,000 votes, because there were tens of thousands of ballots in the county that registered no vote in the Senate race. Because Broward is a heavily Democratic county, the Nelson campaign had hoped that those so-called undervotes were actually votes for Nelson that the tabulating machines had skipped over. But on Friday morning, it quickly became apparent that this was not the case.

Instead, it’s likely ballot design that put a significant dent in Nelson’s vote totals here in Broward County, and may have cost him the race. The Senate candidates were listed right under the instructions on the ballot, and voters moving quickly could easily have overlooked that race. 

Last Saturday, Marc Elias, an election attorney working for Nelson, told reporters on a call that he expected the hand recount to give Nelson the lead. “We expect that when we get to a hand recount, we’re going to see a significant jump in the total number of votes counted versus the machines,” he said. “Based on just the demographics and the partisan breakdown of various counties, I think you’re going to see a significant increase in the Nelson vote share.”

But in Broward, that does not appear to be happening. People circulating among the tables observed the same thing. Two observers, one for each party, both estimated that 90 percent of the ballots being recounted were “no votes.” An hour and a half into the hand recount of thousands of ballots, the work appeared almost done.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate