It’s now officially the fault of you sloppy people.
The machine recount in Florida Senate District 37 was completed Wednesday afternoon and Republican Ileana Garcia, a Latinas for Trump founder, still leads incumbent Democrat Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez — by a scant 28 votes.
The gap only shrunk by 3 ballots from the 31-vote difference reported on Friday, which had grown from the numbers reported on Election Day. It’s been up and down all week.
But that could be widened or reversed this by Friday, maybe even Thursday evening. Because there were 87 over votes — where more than one candidate’s bubble is filled in, usually in error — and a whopping 8,358 under votes, where no bubbles were filled in dark enough to be read by the machine.
Read related: Florida Senate 37 gap grows to 31 votes, Jose Javier Rodriguez heads to recount
Not everybody follows instructions well. While the ballots clearly say to fill in the whole bubble, sometimes people don’t. In cases where the race is razor thin like these (.25% or less), and the under or over votes can make a difference, those votes are set aside to be manually counted to see if the voters’ intent can be determined.
The state on Wednesday ordered a manual count where the canvassing board — Miami-Dade County Judge Victoria Ferrer, Miami-Dade County Judge Milena Abreu and Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Christina White — will look at these ballots more carefully to try to figure that out.
The 87 over votes are key. Because there was another candidate with the same last name as the incumbent (more on that later).
If, for example, someone marked the NPA candidate Alex Rodriguez by mistake, which is entirely possible, and then crossed it off and bubbled in for J-Rod, that vote is an over vote. And it would be counted as a vote for J-Rod if the canvassing board determines that the intent is obvious.
“We said from Day One that this process is not only about making sure every vote is counted, but that every vote is counted correctly with full voter intent.”
— Christian Ulvert, campaign consultant for Jose Javier Rodriguez
J-Rod’s team is optimistic that the 28-vote margin can be overcome once those overs and unders are reviewed.
Read related: Six mayors in his state senate district back incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez
“Some voters that may have started to bubble in Alex Rodriguez could have gotten confused, exed it out and voted for Jose Javier,” said Christian Ulvert, J-Rod’s campaign consultant. “That’s why we said from Day One that this process is not only about making sure every vote is counted, but that every vote is counted correctly with full voter intent.”
At the end of the day Wednesday, Garcia had 104,597 votes cast for her and J-Rod had 104,569. But that means that both of them lost votes. The numbers on the county website showed them with pre-recount totals of 104,616 and 104,585, respectively — which is 19 and 16 fewer than Tuesday, respectively.
Alex Rodriguez had 6,376. One less than before the recount.
But we’ll find out if any of those were really supposed to go to the other Rodriguez.
FL Senate 37 race heads into manual recount of 8,445 over and under votes added by Ladra on
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