A statewide machine recount of more than 8 million votes slowly was in full swing in Florida over the weekend for three seats including the closely watched governor and U.S. Senate races.

Ballot counting began in Broward and Palm Beach counties, two Democratic strongholds, after razor-thin margins caused Florida's secretary of state to order a recount on Saturday.

In the Senate race, the Republican challenger, Gov. Rick Scott, claimed victory just before midnight Tuesday, but the incumbent, Democrat Bill Nelson, never conceded the race. The vote totals on the Florida Division of Elections' website show Scott had 50.07 percent of the ballots counted, to 49.92 percent for Nelson.

Scott has accused election officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties of "rampant fraud" and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate.

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In the race for governor, Republican candidate, Rep. Ron DeSantis, led Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by fewer than 34,000 votes or a margin of .41 percent, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

A day after pulling back his concession in the race for Florida governor Saturday, Gillum will be heading to recount ground zero for a count every vote rally.

Sunday morning, Gillum and his family were to attend a church service in Tallahassee, where the congregation adorned in blue and white and Gillum campaign paraphernalia was to honor his years of public service.

He will then travel south to Fort Lauderdale in Broward County for “a faith event to count every vote” at New Mount Olive Baptist Church this evening.

In the other close race for commissioner of agriculture, Democrat Nikki Fried extended her margin to 51.30 percent to 48.70 percent for Republican Matt Caldwell.

The 3 p.m. Thursday deadline for the unofficial recount totals loomed large over the troubled counties, both of which have election workers feeding ballots through machines 24 hours a day.

The recount is underway by Supervisor of Elections Leslie Swan’s office and so far, it’s been smooth sailing.

In major populations centers such as Broward, Miami-Dade, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, the recount has been ongoing without incident. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. All counties face a Thursday afternoon deadline to complete the recount.

Beginning around 8:15 a.m., officials from Swan’s office began to manually feed about 77,000 ballots into two new electronic DS 200 machines that tabulate the votes cast in early voting, on Election Day and by mail. About three hours later, about one-third of the ballots had been read, Swan said.

“Our system is working perfectly,” said Swan. “It’s hard to say how long this process will take because we have never used this equipment before but it is certainly faster than we could have done with our old equipment.”

The recount began in Palm Beach County Saturday evening around 5 p.m.

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Election workers ran small stacks of paper ballots through four machines Sunday morning. A couple dozen workers seated at nearby tables were duplicating damaged ballots that couldn’t be processed by the machines.

In a closed-off room, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher and 15th Circuit Judge August Bonavita, both members of the county’s canvassing board, were examining ballots labeled “undervotes” and “overvotes” as attorneys, reporters and members of the public watched on.

An undervote is when no candidate is selected in a particular race, while an overvote occurs when too many choices were selected.

Irwin Jacobowitz, the third member of the canvassing board, joined about 11 a.m. to give Bonavita a break.

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office reached capacity before 7 a.m., when the recount was scheduled to commence. The area outside bustled with news crews and attorneys intent on getting inside. Plenty of law enforcement guarded the area.



It rained off and on as a small contingent of protestors with Trump, DeSantis and Scott signs huddled up, but did not chant or cause any disruptions.

Broward County was scheduled to begin counting about 700,000 ballots Sunday morning, but a tested machine wasn’t registering all ballots. Republican representatives asked that all machines be retested and county officials agreed.

Groups of journalists gathered outside the doors of the Broward county supervisor of elections office in Lauderhill Florida. Small groups of reporters had been allowed inside the building until instructions were given to stop allowing members of the media because the building had reached capacity. The rest were instructed to wait outside.

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Four hours after counting was originally scheduled to begin, ballot counting machines in Broward County were calibrated and workers began counting ballots

When reporters showed up Sunday morning at the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Office, expecting to observe the ballot recount, no one was there except for a St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy said Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker told him the recount had been postponed and would begin at 7 a.m. Monday.

An expert who was being brought in to calibrate the counting machine before the recount could begin was unable to arrive in time because of a delayed flight, the deputy said.

Since the county’s unofficial vote totals were compiled Tuesday night, another 314 ballots were counted, most of them apparently from Democrats.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Ana Ceballos, Naples Daily News; Joel Shannon, USA TODAY

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