Nelson asks that all elections supervisors in the state be given more time to recount ballots after earlier order to lift Thursday's deadline for PB County.

A Palm Beach County legislative candidate on Tuesday won and then quickly lost the first round of his legal battle to extend the deadline for election recounts to be completed as growing political heat generated lawsuits in federal and state courts in Tallahassee.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed by Democratic Florida House District 89 candidate Jim Bonfiglio, who is trailing by 37 votes in his race against Republican Mike Caruso, a Leon County judge ordered that Palm Beach County elections officials be given until Nov. 27 to complete their recounts.

However, Judge Karen Gievers' decision to lift Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline in Palm Beach County was trumped when Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner petitioned to move the case to federal court.

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“We’re now in federal court territory, said Marisol Samayoa, a spokeswoman for the campaign arm of the Florida Democratic Party. A federal judge in Tallahassee, who is hearing other challenges associated with the statewide recount, gave all sides until 5 p.m. Wednesday to explain why the county's deadline should or shouldn’t be extended.

In addition to Detzner’s legal maneuvering, incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democrat who is trailing by 12,100 votes in his battle against Republican Gov. Rick Scott, also entered the legal fray.

Nelson filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee asking that all elections supervisors in the state be given more time to recount ballots. The vote-counting will decide not only the U.S. Senate contest but the governor's race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum and also whether Democrat Nikki Fried or Republican Matt Caldwell will be the state’s next agriculture and consumer services commissioner. In addition to the race for the District 89 seat to represent the Boca Raton area, recounts are underway in a state Senate seat in Hillsborough County and a state House seat in Volusia County.

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"We seek to give all 67 county supervisors sufficient time to finish the legally-mandated recount and do so accurately," said Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson's campaign.

As it did in the 2000 presidential election meltdown, Palm Beach County is playing a pivotal role in the dueling lawsuits. Problems here are prominently mentioned in Nelson’s lawsuit.

"Unsurprisingly, officials in one of Florida’s largest counties — Palm Beach — have already indicated that it may be impossible to complete a machine recount for all outstanding races by the deadline of Thursday at 3 p.m.," Nelson said in the lawsuit joined by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

To force supervisors to submit incomplete results would disenfranchise thousands of voters, his attorneys wrote.

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The deadline and other practices “impose a severe burden — disenfranchisement — on the right to vote of the voters who cast ballots that have thus far been improperly rejected and will only be counted accurately if both a machine and manual recount are completed,” they said in the lawsuit.

In her short-lived ruling on Bonfiglio’s lawsuit, Leon County Circuit Judge Gievers said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher and the canvassing board deserved more time because the problems they are dealing with are unusual. The county’s tabulating machines are old. It only has eight of them.

“Reportedly unique among Florida’s 67 supervisors, Supervisor Bucher has available to her machines that are 11 years old and can only count ballots for one contest at a time, while the machines available in the other 66 counties can perform machine recounts of more than one contest at a time,” Gievers wrote.

After prematurely celebrating his victory, Bonfiglio blasted Detzner, saying the secretary of state was “playing politics” and his actions were “at best disingenuous."

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The Republican candidate, Caruso, said he agreed with Bonfiglio, a former Ocean Ridge mayor, that Thursday’s deadline was artificial. He said he had no intention of challenging his opponent’s lawsuit contesting Bucher’s decision to count the District 89 race only after she was done tallying votes in the three statewide races.

"How can anybody say we don't want every vote counted? That's all we want,” Caruso said. “Hopefully the supervisor of elections is given enough time to get it done."

Bucher said late Monday that her staff could complete the recount of only the U.S. Senate seat by the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline. That would mean that, by default, Palm Beach County's final vote tallies in the races for governor, agriculture and consumer services commissioner and District 89 would be the results Bucher's office submitted to the state on Saturday. None of the votes tallied this week would be added to the vote totals.

Recognizing those realities, Caruos said he also knows the District 89 race isn’t the only one in play.

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"I would want to be the first race so we can get this done quickly," Caruso said. "But the way I see it, and you have a U.S. Senate race hanging in the balance, you have a governor's race hanging in the balance. If the governor's race doesn't make it under the wire because they're counting House District 89 ballots, I think that would make this a disingenuous move."

The dueling federal lawsuits are among nearly a dozen that have been filed since the recount began Saturday.

Gov. Scott has filed several lawsuits against Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes and against Bucher. Nelson is also challenging a state law that requires supervisors to toss out mail-in and provisional ballots if the signatures on them don’t match those on file. He is also challenging the way supervisors are forced to handle under-votes and over-votes.

Staff writers Alexandra Seltzer and Lulu Ramadan contributed to this story.



