Florida is recounting votes for its gubernatorial and Senate races

Leon County Supervisor of Elections employee, Holly Thompson, shows an original ballot and one remarked by the canvassing board to allow the ballot to be machine counted.
(Image credit: Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

Florida on Saturday began a statewide recount for its gubernatorial and Senate races, as well as contests for agriculture commissioner and three state legislature seats.

In the gubernatorial race, Ron DeSantis (R) presently leads Andrew Gillum (D) by about 34,000 votes, a gap of just 0.41 percent. The Senate race margin is smaller still, with Rick Scott (R) leading incumbent Bill Nelson (D) by a mere 0.15 percent, about 12,500 votes. The races will be subject to a mechanical recount to be completed by Thursday, and the Senate contest will receive additional scrutiny by hand because its margin is below 0.25 percent.

President Trump's response to the recount news was to again tweet his unfounded claim that this is evidence of elections being stolen:

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Georgia's gubernatorial race also remains contested, as candidate Stacey Abrams (D) refuses to concede her race to opponent Brian Kemp (R), though he continues to claim victory. The race has not been officially called.

Abrams' campaign on Saturday accused Kemp's former office of secretary of state, from which he resigned Thursday and which administers the election, of undercounting the number of provisional ballots which remain to be counted. If the provisional ballots favor Abrams, they could shift vote totals enough to trigger a recount or even a runoff election in early December.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.