November 12, 2018
By James Hohmann with Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA: As Florida’s 67 counties (click here) retabulate their ballots and lawyers duke it out in court, Rick Scott is hiring staff for a Senate office, conferring with Mitch McConnell about committee assignments and considering what asks he might make of President Trump to increase his effectiveness as a freshman.
Unofficial tallies show the Republican leading three-term Sen. Bill Nelson (D) by 12,562 votes out of more than 8 million ballots cast, a margin of 0.15 percent. Nelson, who never conceded, remains hopeful he will come out on top after recounts by machine and then, if the current margin holds, by hand....
Different than Georgia where Brian Kemp resigned his position as Secretary of State; a federal judge is placing the vote first and ordered the ballots deemed illegal by Kemp now being counted.It might be interesting to think about the implications of the judge's decision that the ballots are in good enough legal condition to be counted. Did Kemp break any law that created the necessity for a judicial review of the facts? What if he did? He was trying to rig the election in the face of a fair and legal recount.
November 13, 2018
By Nicoquel Terry Ellis
Atlanta – A federal judge (click here) has ordered Georgia election officials to review all provisional ballots cast in the midterm elections and prohibited the state from certifying the election before Friday.
And another judge ruled Tuesday that absentee ballots that have been rejected because there were problems with the date of birth must be counted.
Georgia's bitterly fought contest for governor remains undecided. Republican Brian Kemp leads Democrat Stacey Abrams by nearly 59,000 votes.
Kemp has declared himself the winner of the vote last week, resigned as Georgia's secretary of state and named a transition team....
