Florida's Senate race isn't over yet and may not be for several days.

The Republican challenger Gov. Rick Scott claimed victory just before midnight Tuesday, when he held a lead of about 0.8 percentage points with a handful of precincts to be counted.

Shortly after that, incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson released a statement that the results were disappointing, but never conceded the race.

As more votes were counted overnight, though, the race tightened to less than the 0.5 margin that triggers an automatic recount.

"We are proceeding to a recount," Nelson said Wednesday morning, in a brief statement.

Scott campaign spokesman Chris Hartline told the Tampa Bay Times Wednesday morning, "The race is over," but he acknowledged a recount will likely go forward based on the narrow margin between the candidates — unless Nelson declines to proceed.

"It's a sad way for Bill Nelson to end his career," Hartline said. "He is desperately trying to hold on to something that no longer exists."

The Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who would oversee any recount, has not weighed in. Detzner is a Scott appointee.

As of 4:00 p.m., unofficial results showed Scott with a lead of just 30,176 votes out of more than 8.1 million cast. According to the Division of Elections website, Broward, Duval and Palm Beach counties — all Democratic strongholds — were still counting absentee ballots and Broward still had not completed counting early voting ballots.

Only a handful of counties have finished counting provisional ballots and overseas absentee ballots can continue to be counted until 10 days after the election. An analysis by The New York Times estimates that there are still about 113,000 ballots to be counted in the state. Those votes are in areas where Nelson won by about 25 points.

County election officials have until noon Saturday to report unofficial results to the state. If the winning margin is less than 0.5 points according to those results, a machine recount is mandated by state law, unless the losing candidate says in writing that he does not wish to pursue the recount.

A machine recount involves running all the paper ballots through a tabulation machine to ensure the original count was accurate. County officials have until 3 p.m. Nov. 15 to report recount totals to the state. Meanwhile, absentee ballots from overseas military personnel and civilian volunteers can be accepted until Nov. 16, provided they were postmarked by election day.

If the machine recount shows a margin of less than 0.25 percentage points, a hand recount kicks in.

Recounting ballots by hand is a tedious process that could drag on for days. State law calls for the election to be certified by Nov. 18. But lawsuits could push that date back, as happened when the 2000 presidential election battle continued until the middle of December when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling ended the recount efforts, handing a George W. Bush the presidency.

George Levesque, an attorney with Gray Robinson's Tallahassee office, says that any hand recount would be much easier now than in 2000, when election officials had to determine whether a "hanging chad" in old punch-card ballots indicated that a voter had meant to vote for a certain candidate.

Any manual recount doesn't mean that election officials would look at each of the 8 million ballots cast in the state. Instead, they would be examining ballots that tabulation machines said had "overvotes" or "undervotes" in the contested race.

An overvote occurs when the tabulating machine believes a voter cast more than one vote in a certain race. In some cases, voters do fill out more than one bubble for a race. Such "true" overvotes are not counted.

But sometimes a stray pen mark or other voter error can cause the tabulation machines to register an overvote. In such cases, where the voter intent is clear from ballot to election officials, the vote is counted.

"You are trying to figure if it was an intentional overvote, or if you can divine the intention of the voter," Levesque said.

Similarly, an undervote is when a tabulation machine says no vote was registered in a race. Voters sometimes decide not to vote in certain races, perhaps because they feel they don't know enough about the candidates.

But such true undervotes are more common in down-ballot races, not high-profile races like a U.S. Senate Election. And, as with overvotes, sometimes they are caused by voters improperly filling out ballots. If the intent of the voter is clear from an examination of the ballot, the vote is counted.

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Meantime, the Nelson campaign said today it intends to have observers in all 67 counties watching for any irregularities, mistakes or unusual partisan activities.

The campaign pointed to a pre-election day story in the Tampa Bay Time where Madison County Republican Supervisor of Election Thomas Hardee — who initially was appointed to office by Scott — was quoted as saying he would "eat his [Nelson's] lunch.”

"We expect the supervisors, regardless of their party affiliation, will discharge their constitutional duties," said Marc Elias, an election lawyer representing the Nelson campaign.

A recount also appears likely in the Commissioner of Agriculture race. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, Republican Matt Caldwell had a 12,398 vote lead over Democrat Nikki Fried in a race where more than 8 million votes were cast.

Contact McCarthy at 321-752-5018 or jmccarthy@floridatoday.com.

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