Florida orders recount of Senate & governor races, Gillum withdraws concession to DeSantis

Florida is officially holding a recount of votes in its Senate and governor races, where Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis have led over their Democratic rivals, Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum, both by a small margin.

With the results of both races falling within the margin of triggering a recount, Florida secretary of state Ken Detzner ordered just that on Saturday.

A machine recount of ballots will be required in the case of DeSantis, who led Tallahassee Mayor Gillum by less than 0.5 percentage points, while the Senate race saw an even smaller margin of 0.25 percentage points. Scott’s lead over Nelson will thus require a hand recount of ballots from tabulation machines.

It didn’t take long for Gillum to walk back on his concession to DeSantis in the wake of the vote recount, with him announcing that “I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote.”

READ MORE: Florida judge orders voter records inspection, siding with Republicans as recount looms

With accusations of fraud and lawsuits surrounding the tight contests, many drew parallels to the state’s 2000 presidential recount, which delayed the results of the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore for five weeks before the US Supreme Court intervened.

President Donald Trump promptly reacted to the decision, likely to drag on the highly-polarized race, by tweeting that some – the Democrats, apparently – have been “trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida!”

READ MORE: Florida midterm mayhem: County supervisor refusing to submit ballots despite court order

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