Andrew Gillum and his supporters Sunday prayed for a miracle, or, given the math at hand, the recount equivalent of winning the lottery with a quick-pick ticket.

The Tallahassee Mayor trails Republican Ron DeSantis by 33,684 votes in the race to be governor and a machine recount of votes is underway.

“The final count is not done. Let’s be clear about that,” said Gillum at the Sunday services at the Bethel AME Church in Tallahassee.

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Saturday Gillum had pulled back his Election Night concession and the congratulations he had sent to DeSantis.

And then at a church service billed as a celebration of his political legacy – the first African-American to capture a major Florida party nomination and the most votes a Democratic candidate for governor had ever received – Gillum may have foreshadowed a lengthy post-election fight while he laid out his new mission.

The task at hand, he said in a 14-minute talk punctuated with standing ovations and shouts of encouragement, is to ensure that every legally cast vote in the midterm election is counted.

“We are not talking about new votes, we are not talking about miracle votes we are not talking about votes out of thin air, we are talking about the people,” said Gillum, firing up his audience into what seemed would be a crescendo but that suddenly climaxed into silence.

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“They did their civic responsibility and showed up under the premise their vote will be counted, and now it is our job to ensure that every single one of their votes be counted," said Gillum to a hushed audience of nearly 200 congregrants, many wearing Gillum paraphernalia. "That is what the democratic process is about.”

But Gillum faces long odds in overcoming the DeSantis lead.

Recounts don’t move the vote count much and very rarely do they change election night results. Fairvote.org found 27 recounts in 4,687 general elections between 2000 and 2015. A recount changed the winner three times.

The machine recount needs to narrow DeSantis' lead by about 15,000 votes to force a mandated hand recount of over and under vote ballots.

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If one occurs, results would be due in Tallahassee by Saturday.

DeSantis appears unworried about losing the lead.

Unlike Gillum and the contestants in the other two races under a recount, U.S. Senate and Agriculture Commissioner, DeSantis called the election night results, “clear and unambiguous.”

The Republican Party refers to DeSantis as “Governor-elect” and the former Congressman has formed a transition team while he prepares to take office in January.

“I am honored by the trust that Floridians have placed in me to serve as your next governor,” DeSantis said.

While Gillum was being honored at church, the Leon County Supervisor of Elections began the process of recounting votes.

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Leon County may finish an automatic recount of the governor’s race by Monday afternoon, said Election Supervisor Mark Earley.

In a strip plaza two hills and four miles east of the state capitol, elections workers processed ballots at the rate of 5,500 ballots an hour Sunday afternoon.

They began the day with a stack of more than 120,000 and Earley was confident he would beat Thursday's deadline by at least 48 hours, and possibly by the end of Monday.

Much of the controversy and anger over the original count stems from delay in results out of Broward and Palm Beach counties. Earley thinks election workers there were blindsided by an unprecedented number of vote-by-mail ballots. The signature verification process he said eats up time and requires additional resources and computer screens.

About 2.5 million Floridians cast vote-by-mail ballots.

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“We love to process votes but now we are getting blamed for a greater voter turnout. It’s tough,” said Earley, about an unexpected deluge of VBM ballots. Leon had more than 25,000.

“If you ask your County Commission for more computer screens and staff for a potential demand that you have never seen coming before, that’s a tough ask,” explained Earley, who added his office was nearly swamped by VBMs but appears to have handled them without incident.

While the schedule for the machine and potential hand-recount concludes next Sunday, Gillum in his remarks at Bethel AME, mentioned “weeks,” “couple of weeks” and “months” before he “brings this all the way home.”

Election results are scheduled to be certified by the governor and two cabinet members Tuesday Nov. 20. Any citizen will then have until Nov. 30 to file a challenge in circuit court to the results, based on “irregularities.”

After the service, Gillum was asked if his remarks foreshadowed such a legal challenge.

“No, no, no,” said the candidate standing in the church parking lot across the street from Florida A&M University. “We are just following the process to make sure every voted is counted.”

The candidate then got in a waiting car to head to another church service at recount ground zero in Fort Lauderdale in Broward County.

“It’s the same goal,” said Gillum when asked about his downstate trip. “We want to make sure every vote is counted.”

Follow James Call on Twitter: @CallTallahassee