TALLAHASSEE, Fla. _ Nine days after Florida's Election Day, the deadline for machine recounts of three statewide races came and went Thursday, but Andrew Gillum refused to concede and urged vote counting to continue even as his margin behind Ron DeSantis was slimmed by just one vote.
"A vote denied is justice denied _ the State of Florida must count every legally cast vote," Gillum said in a statement as the machine recount was completed in all but a few counties. "As today's unofficial reports and recent court proceedings make clear, there are tens of thousands of votes that have yet to be counted. We plan to do all we can to ensure that every voice is heard in this process.''
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, calling the state a "laughingstock,'' refused to suspend deadlines in the races for U.S. Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner of 3 p.m. Thursday for machine recounts and noon Sunday for hand recounts.
Gillum had trailed Republican Ron DeSantis by 33,684 votes before the recount began, and while both candidates lost votes in the recount, the margin on Thursday was trimmed by one vote to 33,683.
The U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott, in which Scott gained 41 votes to lead Nelson by 12,603 votes, moved to a hand recount of overvotes and undervotes, as did the even slimmer race between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell for agriculture commissioner, in which Fried led by 5,307 votes.
The deadline to get hand recounts done is Sunday. Under state law, results are to be officially certified on Tuesday in Tallahassee.
In Palm Beach, the county's Election Office was unable to perform a recount because of malfunctioning vote-counting machines. The county had to revert to its initial, pre-recount numbers as part of the new statewide results.
"It was a heroic effort and we just completed uploading our Saturday results, as was required by law," elections chief Susan Bucher announced on Thursday as the 3 p.m. deadline passed.
A manual recount of 5,900 overvotes and undervotes was set to begin in Palm Beach at 4 p.m., but Nelson attorney Marc Elias wrote on Twitter the campaign would sue to have all ballots in Palm Beach hand-counted "due to systematic machine failure during the machine recount."
Hillsborough County also decided not to send its recount results to the state and reverted to original, pre-recount numbers due to what its canvassing board believed were machine issues, Elias said.
In Orange County, the hand recount of 259 overvotes and 2,977 undervotes was expected to begin Friday morning.
All six major candidates lost votes in the machine recount in Orange, with the Democrats losing on average about 27 more votes than Republicans. Nelson lost 94 votes, Gillum 84 and Fried 75, while Scott lost 59, DeSantis 55 and Caldwell 59.
In Seminole, the three Republican candidates each gained three or four votes and each Democrats lost between three and five votes. In Lake, Democrats each lost 13 or 14 votes while Republicans lost between five and eight.
But the percentage point difference in Orange, Seminole and Lake in all three races in remained exactly the same.
Shortly before the state deadline, Scott spokesman Chris Hartline claimed Scott's lead had grown by 54 votes with 60 of 67 counties, or 75 percent of the vote, having reported.
"Everyone knows how this is going to end," Hartline said in a statement. "What the Democrats want to do here is throw out all the fraud protections on the books, not re-elect Bill Nelson. ... Nelson will have to decide if he wants to preserve his legacy and go out with dignity or if he wants to be forever remembered as the guy that liberal interest groups used in an effort to win the presidential election two years early."
The vote totals could also still change thanks to Judge Walker's separate ruling Thursday that voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to a mismatched signature issue _ at least 3,781 throughout Florida, including 467 in Orange County _ had until 5 p.m. Saturday to challenge the decision with their local elections office.
Other legal challenges have disputed votes that were accepted by email and fax in Hurricane Michael-ravaged Bay County.
