The Florida election will go on a bit longer.
On Monday, officials from Duval County reported that a faulty voting machine failed to count more than 15,000 ballots, throwing even more uncertainty in a vote-counting process rife with controversy and allegations of voter fraud. As First Coast News reported, the malfunctioning machine did not record any of the votes that were sent through it on Election Day.
“According to the Supervisor of Elections, Mike Hogan, Machine 2 was not counting votes. All ballots that went through that machine must be recounted again,” the report noted.
That process is expected to take at least another day, leading the final results of Florida’s vote to stretch at least one week from Election Day. There could be more complications as well — the report added that another vote counting machine had to be taken out of service due to an “optical cable issue.”
While it was not immediately clear what effect this could have on the Florida election, it would seem to boost the hopes of Democratic candidates in the gubernatorial and Senate races. As county results from Politico noted, Duval County is the home of the city of Jacksonville — and was one of the more Democratic-leaning areas in the state this year. Democrat Andrew Gillum won the county by more than three points over Republican Ron DeSantis, meaning that both Gillum and Democratic candidate for Senate, Bill Nelson, could stand to net more than 1,000 votes from the uncounted ballots alone.
That bucked a historic trend, as First Coast News noted that this was the first time in 32 years that the majority of votes for governor in Duval County went to a Democrat.
JUST IN: 100% of the votes in Duval County are in and for the first time since 1986, the majority of Duval County has voted blue for Florida Governor. (SOURCE: NBC News)
GOV. RACE NUMBERS: https://t.co/fLgfR6Kms3 pic.twitter.com/r9zgDveCe4
— First Coast News (@FCN2go) November 7, 2018
The remaining statewide races in Florida have been contentious, with Republicans — including Donald Trump — making allegations of voter fraud in favor of Democrats. As the Associated Press reported, Circuit Chief Judge Jack Tuter said in an emergency hearing on Monday that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Broward County, a target for Republicans, and urged all sides to “ramp down the rhetoric.”
Also on Monday, Donald Trump took to Twitter to suggest that Florida election officials should simply accept the totals from Election Night, when Republicans were in the lead. Tens of thousands of votes had not yet been counted as of that time. As many noted, that would mean discounting the votes of active duty military members, per the Inquisitr , which federal law states must be counted until November 14.
