Three counties missed the deadline to finish their machine recounts in Florida on Thursday, meaning all the work that has been done over the past several days will not count.
The state will still conduct a manual recount in two races, including the hostly contested Senate race. But for now, the results from last week's midterm elections — which have Republicans Ron DeSantis and Gov. Rick Scott winning the gubernatorial and Senate races — are what count in Broward, Palm Beach, and Hillsborough Counties, according to the Miami Herald.
What is confusing is Broward officials announced at 2:45 p.m. ET on Thursday that they beat the 3 p.m. ET deadline to finish the machine recount by 15 minutes. As it turned out, the county ended up reporting its results to the state two minutes late.
The Herald quoted Joseph D'Alessandro, the county's director of elections planning, as saying, "Basically I just worked my a$$ off for nothing."
D'Alessandro also admitted there was a difference of more than 2,000 votes between the original count and the machine recount.
"We did not correctly handle the ballots," he said. "We are going to look into that and see why that took place."
Broward's Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes has come under fire during the recount over corruption and fraud allegations. She said Thursday, "We've been desperately trying to finish."
Numbers-wise, the gubernatorial race between DeSantis and Andrew Gillum changed by a single vote from the state-wide recount — meaning DeSantis has a 33,683-vote lead, according to the Sun-Sentinel. The difference of 0.41 percent is larger than the 0.25 percent that automatically triggers a manual recount.
Gillum has yet to concede the race in light of the updated numbers.
In the Senate race, Scott leads incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., by about 12,600 votes, or 0.15 percent. Floridians cast more than 8 million votes in the midterm elections.
Palm Beach missed the deadline after its machines overheated this week. Officials had to recount one race at a time, which did not leave enough time to finish. In Hillsborough County, an 846-vote deficit was discovered, which perplexed officials to the point they did not file the recount results.
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