Dems plead recount case in court

TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s recount battled blazed across a Tallahassee federal courtroom Wednesday, with attorneys for Democrat Bill Nelson seeking to have thousands of ballots rejected because of flawed signatures now included in the count for U.S. Senate.

State elections officials presented data that showed some 5,000 voters had vote-by-mail or provisional ballots thrown out because their signatures did not match those on file with county elections offices.

Attorneys for Secretary of State Ken Detzner, Florida’s top elections official, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, representing Gov. Rick Scott, who holds a 12,562-vote lead over Nelson, argued that any change — coming a week after Election Day — would undermine the system.

“We’re being asked to throw a wrench into a sequenced, statutory process,” said Mohammad Jazil, attorney for the secretary.

But U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who is overseeing seven lawsuits filed in Florida’s unprecedented, three-race recount battle, frequently voiced frustration during the five-hour hearing on the signature-match challenge.

“I think it’s just fundamentally a bad idea to ask a federal judge to rewrite the election code while the votes are being counted,” said Walker, who earlier said that with the pile of lawsuits before him, he was being asked to overhaul Florida election law “piece-by-piece.”

Nelson’s attorney, Uzoma Nkwonta, argued that Florida’s signature requirement is unconstitutional, since it is applied differently by elections officials across the counties. He said it was important to at least give rejected voters a chance to challenge that decision — and that the state’s argument against disrupting deadlines was insufficient.

“Administrative deadlines should not come in the way of remedying a constitutional violation,” Nkwonta told the judge, saying the state was embracing “deadlines for the sake of deadlines.”

The arguments came on the eve of a 3 p.m., Thursday deadline for counties to complete machine recounts in the U.S. Senate race, the governor’s contest — where Republican Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Andrew Gillum by 33,684 votes — and agriculture commissioner’s race, where Democrat Nikki Fried is 5,326 votes ahead of Republican Matt Caldwell.

Another of Nelson’s lawsuits before Walker asks to extend that deadline, also delaying what is likely to be a needed manual recount of over-votes and under-votes in the Senate and agriculture commissioner’s races.

The governor’s race could be decided when the machine recount is finished, since DeSantis’ current leading margin is more than .25 percentage points, the level state law sets as requiring a hand count.

State law also requires a manual recount to be completed by noon, Nov. 18. The official certification of the elections is to take place Nov. 20, when the state’s elections canvassing commission meets.

Palm Beach County, a Democratic stronghold, is expected to only complete the Senate machine recount by Thursday’s deadline, since its older tabulating machines can only handle one race at a time.

Palm Beach County also figured in Wednesday’s testimony about votes rejected because of problems matching signatures.

State elections officials surveyed Florida’s 67 counties about the number of such rejections and 45 counties responding resulted in a total of 3,781 mail-in and provisional ballots that were rejected.

Of those, Palm Beach County had the most thrown-out ballots — 931, representing about a quarter of all those tossed. Based on the state data, testimony Wednesday indicated that possibly 5,000 ballots could be the amount rejected statewide and that Nelson was seeking to have included.

If the Democrat was able to collect a significant portion of that total, he could cut into Scott’s lead.

But Nelson, who is seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, clearly would need more success in the manual recount phase to overtake Scott, who traveled Wednesday to Washington to take part in new senator orientation.

In a free-ranging court hearing, Walker engaged in lengthy exchanges with the attorneys for all sides about what kind of ruling he could make.

The judge, who has a long history with Scott and Florida Republicans, having recently overturned a ban on having early voting on college campuses, returned frequently to the idea of issuing an order that would allow voters whose ballots were rejected because of signature issues to have a few more days to challenge the matter before county canvassing boards.

That idea, however, gained little support.

While attorneys for the state and Republicans want the deadlines strictly adhered to, Nelson’s attorney said allowing a few more days for voters to come in and seek to have their votes reinstated wouldn’t be enough.

“A three- or four-day window would probably be insufficient,” said Nkwonta. “A lot of these voters still don’t know that their ballots have been rejected.”

Walker, asked though, if “At some point, isn’t there some onus of the voter?” to check the status of a ballot.