A heavily Republican Florida county allowed some residents to vote by email, apparently illegally

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) jumped into the GOP pile-on of Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes on Monday, tweeting that "there is no question ... Snipes failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts." Snipes, first appointed by Bush, has made some errors, but state law enforcement and election officials have found no evidence of illegal behavior by Snipes, and on Monday a judge ruled against Gov. Rick Scott's (R) motion to impound the voting equipment in heavily Democratic Broward County.

In heavily Republican Bay County, however, election supervisor Mark Andersen acknowledged Monday that he had allowed some voters to cast their ballots over email, which is not allowed under state law.

Bay County was hit hard by Hurricane Michael on Oct. 10, and Scott issued an executive order on Oct. 18 extending early voting and expanding more voting locations in the eight affected counties. His order, The Associated Press reports, explicitly prohibited votes being returned by email or fax. Andersen defended his decision to let 150 people scan their ballots and email them in, telling NBC affiliate WJHG/WECP, "If you want to turn around and take away these votes away from voters because it's not the normal prescribed issue, I would just say you ought to be ashamed of yourself because what we did is take care of voters."

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Democrat Andrew Gillum, whose race against Republican Ron DeSantis is being recounted, was not moved. "These are the stories that we know," he said Monday evening. "Imagine the ones that we don't." Democrats have filed their own lawsuits, including one by Sen. Bill Nelson (D) seeking to force the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked before Election Day but not delivered in time. You can learn more about the election results from MSNBC's Steve Kornacki and about the lawsuits and the recount below in Ari Melber's report Monday night from Broward County. Peter Weber

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