Florida recount: Bill Nelson concedes after manual recount; Rick Scott heading to Senate

John McCarthy | Florida Today

Show Caption Hide Caption Nelson concedes Fla. Senate race to Scott Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson has ended his bitterly close re-election bid on Sunday by conceding the race to Republican outgoing Governor Rick Scott. Official results submitted Sunday showed Nelson trailing by more than 10,000 votes. (Nov. 19)

It's official: Republican Gov. Rick Scott will be the next U.S. senator from Florida.

The incumbent, Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, conceded Sunday afternoon after the results of the manual recount showed Scott with 10,033 more votes.

Nelson conceded via a video statement, cutting off any further legal challenges in the race.

“Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it,” Scott said in a statement. “We must do what Americans have always done: come together for the good of our state and our country. My focus will not be on looking backward, but on doing exactly what I ran on: making Washington work.”

In his video statement, Nelson, who never mentioned Scott by name, was less conciliatory.

“I will continue to fight on and on for the inalienable human rights that are the soul and glory of the American experiment: civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and the sacred right to vote," Nelson said.

President Trump congratulated Scott via Twitter. “From day one Rick Scott never wavered," he tweeted. "He was a great Governor and will be even a greater Senator in representing the People of Florida. Congratulations to Rick on having waged such a courageous and successful campaign!”

Democrat Nikki Fried hung on through the recount process to defeat Republican Matt Caldwell in the agriculture commission race by 6,753 votes out of more than 8 million cast. She will become the only Democrat holding statewide office in Florida.

Republican former congressman Ron DeSantis will be the state's next governor after Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum conceded Saturday afternoon. A machine recount that ended Thursday showed DeSantis with a 32,463 vote lead.

The state cabinet is set to certify the election results Tuesday.

For Nelson, 76, this could be the final act in a career in public service that began in 1972, when he was elected to represent the Space Coast in the Florida Legislature. He subsequently served in Congress and as the state’s insurance commissioner before being elected to his first of three terms to the Senate in 2000.

Nelson's loss to Scott was only the second loss in a career that has included 14 election victories.

But Nelson's longevity was not enough to overcome the millions of dollars of Rick Scott's personal fortune that the former health care CEO poured into the race. Scott used a good portion of the $64 million of his own money he put into the campaign on TV ads decrying Nelson as a "career politician." One noted that the Ford Pinto was the most popular car in America when Nelson was first elected.

Scott, on the other hand, has run for office just three times, winning two terms as governor before seeking the Senate seat. The fact that he won each race by a margin of 1.2 percentage points or less illustrates how closely divided the state's voters are.

In fact, had it not been for a poorly designed ballot in Broward County, the Senate race likely would have been even closer than it was.

In Broward, a Democratic stronghold, some 30,000 voters didn't record a choice in the Senate, an unusually high number for such a high-profile race.

Nelson's recount hopes rested on discovering that those "undervotes" were the result of machine-counting errors. But both machine and manual recounts showed that in the vast majority of cases, voters simply left the race blank.

The most likely reason: The Senate race, the first listed, was on the lower left corner of the ballot, below voter instructions, a placement that could have made it easy to overlook, especially for infrequent voters not well-versed in the election process.

Had those 30,000 voters followed the rest in the county, who gave nearly seven out of 10 votes to Nelson, the margin would likely have been in the hundreds, not thousands, and possibly could have given Nelson the win.

Low voter turnout in heavily Republican Bay County, which was devastated by Hurricane Michael in October, likely also depressed Scott's vote, making the final margin closer than it otherwise would have been.

Democrat Gillum ends campaign for Fla. governor Democrat Andrew Gillum says he is ending his hard-fought race for Florida governor and has congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis (Nov. 17)

This year's drama marked the second time in less than two decades that the rest of the country looked on while Florida struggled with elections results.

In 2000, the legal battles over the presidential election results dragged on until the middle of December until the U.S. Supreme Court shut down recount battles, essentially handing the state — and the White House — to George W. Bush who won the Sunshine State by 537 votes over Al Gore.

This year's recounts went much smoother in part due to changes in state law that detailed when and how recounts were to be conducted. The lack of such uniform standards were at the heart of many of the legal battles in 2000.

The state and federal governments also helped counties upgrade aging election equipment following the 2000 election.

But the strain on the system of conducting three simultaneous statewide recounts — never before had even one been done — and legal battles over absentee and provisional ballots showed there are still improvements to be made.

Incoming Florida Senate President Bill Galvano said Friday that lawmakers will discuss changes to the state’s election laws.

By the next election cycle, he said, “voters are going to want to have more in terms of assurance that their votes are going to be properly counted.”

Among the problems that arose during the recount:

How to verify signatures on absentee and provisional ballots? Currently, election officials simply compare signatures on such ballots with signatures they have on file. But lawsuits pointed out that signatures change over time and election officials have no particular expertise in handwriting analysis.

How long should absentee ballots be accepted? Those coming from within the United States must be received by 7 p.m. on election day while those coming from overseas can be accepted up to 10 days after the polls close. In both cases, the ballots need to be postmarked no later than election day.

The time line for recounts. Election workers toiled around the clock for days after a machine recount was ordered in the Senate, governor and agriculture commission races. Three of the state's 67 counties didn't complete their recounts by the state-mandated deadline. Manual recounts were much smoother, but those only involved the 90,000 or so ballots showing no or too many candidates marked in a race, not the more than 8 million cast statewide.

A bigger issue is the state's election equipment. The new technology introduced post-2000 to replace antiquated voting machines is now also becoming outdated. Mechanical problems played a role in Palm Beach, Broward and Hillsborough counties missing the machine-recount deadline.

More: Florida recount: Things smoother than in 2000, but fixes needed; Gillum ends campaign

More: Florida recount: Hand recount complete in Broward in what is not a good sign for Nelson

Grants from the state and federal governments helped counties upgrade their voting equipment following the 2000 election, but counties have been responsible for maintaining and upgrading it, costs they typically put off for as long as possible.

"They are going to have to deal with technology and how to pay for it," said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "Now the counties have to pay for it and election equipment is very expensive."

Scott will join fellow Republican Marco Rubio in the Senate on Jan. 3. It will be the first time since Reconstruction that Florida has had two GOP senators.

Rubio issued a statement Sunday on Nelson’s concession:

“No two Senators from the same state had a better working relationship than the one Senator Nelson and I had. Even though we often voted differently, not once did that interfere with our ability to work together.

“In this era of political tribalism it is easy to forget that there is more to any of us than our political affiliation or our policy leanings. I knew Bill Nelson not just as a Democratic Senator, but also as a man of genuine faith, integrity and character. A man who served our country with a dignity that is increasingly rare in our modern politics.

“I will miss working with him very much.”

Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera will fill out the final days of Scott's term as governor until DeSantis takes office Jan. 8.

It's unclear what's next for Nelson, who grew up in Brevard County.

He has continued to call the Space Coast "home" throughout his career, though he hasn't lived here since being elected Insurance Commissioner in 1994. He still owns land in Malabar, though he lives in Orlando when not in Washington.

Contact McCarthy at 321-752-5018

or jmccarthy@floridatoday.com

More: Florida recount: Things smoother than in 2000, but fixes needed; Gillum ends campaign

More: Florida recount: Hand recount complete in Broward in what is not a good sign for Nelson

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