10 things you need to know today: November 16, 2018

Florida heads into manual recount of its tight Senate race, more than 600 missing as California's Camp Fire toll keeps rising, and more

A burnt car in California
(Image credit: JAVIER TOVAR/AFP/Getty Images)

1. Hand recount ordered in Florida's Senate race

Florida's secretary of state on Thursday ordered an unprecedented statewide hand recount of ballots cast in the state's Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, after a machine recount showed little change to Scott's 12,600-vote, 0.15 percent lead. Florida law requires a hand recount when a race is within 0.25 percent. Republican Ron DeSantis held onto his 0.41 percent lead over Democrat Andrew Gillum in the gubernatorial race after the machine recount, falling outside the quarter-point threshold and indicating that DeSantis will be governor-elect, barring a legal challenge by Gillum. Canvassing boards in the state's 67 counties now have three days to review thousands of rejected ballots to get a final tally in the Senate race.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.