Dems, don’t repeat Gore’s mistake in FL 2000, don’t obsess on Dem counties only, force recount of ALL counties, especially suspicious rurals. Rick Scott & FL GOP setting trap for Dems as in 2000, putting focus on Broward, distracting attention from rural counties they manipulate. Weary saying this: Dems, don’t take GOP bait re: Broward County. Look at FL rural counties known for suppression and undercounting Dem votes. Don’t repeat 2000 mistake.
carl Hiaasen:
In Florida, it’s the thought that counts, because it sure isn’t our votes!
Whenever you see the words “Florida” and “recount” in the same headline, it’s time to start self-medicating — and cover your chads.
For most of the country, the grinding, venomous 2018 mid-terms are over — but not here, in the dependably confused Sunshine State. Joke writers for late-night TV hosts are rapturous.
Three major statewide recounts threaten to torment weary Floridians for days, weeks or longer. It all depends on the number (and tenacity) of lawyers hired by both parties.
The nasty U.S. Senate contest between incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott is almost certainly headed for Recount Purgatory. As of this writing, Scott was ahead of Nelson by only 15,074 votes — roughly .18 percent of the nearly 8.2 million ballots cast so far in that race.
If math isn’t your best subject, here’s another way to put that .18 percent lead in a visual perspective: Think “razor thin.” Now slice that into fractions with a razor.
In Florida, a full recount is initiated when the spread is .5 percent or less. You might be wondering if Scott’s campaign team misplaced their calculators last Tuesday night, because they sent out their beaming candidate to give a victory speech.
If he ends up losing, the celebratory video will become an iconic political relic, like the “Dewey Defeats Truman” front page from 1948.
Also apparently destined for a recount is the race for state agriculture commissioner, with Republican Matt Caldwell losing his election-night lead over Democrat Nikki Fried, and falling behind by 2,915 votes by Friday morning.
Caldwell, Big Sugar’s sweetheart candidate, can afford an army of legal hotshots to challenge the legitimacy of mail-in and provisional ballots as they are tabulated. In other words, this thing could drag on and on.
Finally, the state’s most widely-watched race — one that almost everyone, including the candidates, assumed was settled — is much closer than first believed.
The Big Orange Trumpster’s favored choice for governor, Ron DeSantis, had already declared victory. His opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, had already conceded defeat.
Yet as more ballots came in, DeSantis’s lead began to evaporate, and Gillum retracted his concession. By Friday morning the margin was only .44 percent, which would qualify for an automatic R-word.
Meanwhile Scott has rushed to sue Broward and Palm Beach counties, Democratic strongholds where elections officials aren’t famous for speed or efficiency.
In Broward, 24,000-plus people who voted in the governor’s race neglected to vote for either senatorial candidate — a strange occurrence, since the Senate race was listed first on the county ballot, and the gubernatorial contest was fourth.
Elsewhere, fretful campaign operatives are focused on provisional ballots filed by voters who’d forgotten to bring a photo ID or showed up at the wrong precinct. Both parties are gearing up for battle.
Floridians who were embarrassed by the Bush-Gore debacle in 2000 don’t want to suffer through one more laughingstock recount, much less multiples. A couple of House races also remain too close to call.
In an orderly, incorruptible alternate universe, the process might go smoothly:
A machine recount would be ordered if a candidate loses by .5 percent or less in the first unofficial set of election returns. All ballots would again be fed through the tabulating machines, but only after the machines are first tested for accuracy.
If, after the machine recount, any candidate is losing by .25 percent or less, local canvassing boards would meet to manually evaluate ballots that displayed no votes or too many votes.
You might be thinking: Florida has 67 counties. What are the odds of all of them getting it right?
That chaotic, chad-fondling hand count 18 years ago is what ignited partisan courthouse protests, a blizzard of lawsuits and, ultimately, a split Supreme Court ruling that halted the manual recount and put George W. Bush in the White House.
The other lasting result of that month-long ordeal was, for Floridians, more psychological than political. We woke up in a place that had been internationally exposed as the most bumbling, screwed-up state in America.
What happens during this year’s recounts is unlikely to erase that image. As a fitting asterisk, the person overseeing the festivities is Secretary of State Ken Detzner, appointed to the job in 2012 by now-candidate Rick Scott.
The drama is moving like sewage, slow and fluid. By the time this column appears, the vote margins in these disputed races will have changed again by tiny, crucial percentages.
What won’t change is Florida’s vaudeville role on the national political stage, which is always funnier if you don’t live here.
as if we didn’t already know, bill.
<a href=”https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-maher-donald-trump-right-wing-coup_us_5be6817ae4b0e84388980d26″ rel=”nofollow”>huffpo: </a>Bill Maher Lists All The Ways Donald Trump Is Like A Dictator “You are a narcissist who likes to see his name and face on buildings. You appoint family members to positions of power. You hold rallies even when you’re not running, and they are scary. You talk about jailing the press and political opponents.”<b></b><i></i>
I<em>n his penultimate New Rule of the season, Bill takes a look back at an exhausting year in politics and issues a warning about Trump’s dictatorial desires.</em>
The recount is bad enough, but the loathsome Matt Gaetz is all over cable and twitter being his own vile self. He is the poster child for everything wrong with the far right wing even vaguely related to sanity. Watching him over talk Chris Cuomo with every other word being “fraud” was an exercise in things that make you want to take up heavy drinking.
.
the new Yorker :
Satire from The Borowitz Report
Rick Scott Accuses Democrats of Trying to Thwart G.O.P.’s Successful Voter Suppression
In a hastily called press conference on Thursday evening, Florida Governor Rick Scott accused Democrats of nefariously plotting to undo the Republican Party’s highly successful voter-suppression effort.
“As Republicans, we have worked tirelessly to intimidate, discourage, and otherwise disenfranchise millions of Florida voters,” a visibly enraged Scott said. “We are not about to let Democrats swoop in at the last minute and ruin all of that fine work.”
Scott angrily singled out the Broward County and Palm Beach County supervisors for their “rampant enforcement of the right to vote.”
“They are literally finding votes by people we are a hundred per cent sure we had scared away from the voting booths,” he said. “This will not stand.”
The Florida governor said that if Democrats think that they can undermine the Republicans’ arduous and painstaking efforts to suppress votes in Florida, “they better think again.”
“I will not sit idly by while every vote is counted,” Scott said. “This is Florida, goddammit.”
excerpt from today’s wapo editorial board op ed “There is no way this man should be running the Justice Department”:
[….]
….no random official should be endowed with all the powers of an office as powerful as attorney general, meant for a Senate-vetted individual, even for a relatively short time.
And Mr. Whitaker is worse than random. It took less than 24 hours for material to emerge suggesting he could not survive even a rudimentary vetting.
First, there are Mr. Whitaker’s statements criticizing the Russia probe of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. At the least, they require him to consult Justice Department ethics counsel about whether he can oversee the inquiry with a plausible appearance of evenhandedness. He will do immediate and lasting harm to the Justice Department’s reputation, and to the nation, if he assumes the role of president’s personal henchman and impedes the Mueller probe.
Then there is Mr. Whitaker’s connection to a defunct patent promotion company the Federal Trade Commission called “an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars.” Mr. Whitaker served on its board and once threatened a complaining customer, lending the weight of his former position as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa to the company’s scheme.
Finally, and fundamentally most damning, is Mr. Whitaker’s expressed hostility to Marbury v. Madison, a central case — the central case — in the American constitutional system. It established an indispensable principle: The courts decide what is and is not constitutional. Without Marbury, there would be no effective judicial check on the political branches, no matter how egregious their actions.
If the Senate were consulted, it is impossible to imagine Mr. Whitaker getting close to the attorney general’s office. He should not be there now.
sorry, forgot to post link for above wapo excerpt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/there-is-no-way-this-man-should-be-running-the-justice-department/2018/11/09/f4a2ee60-e45e-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html?utm_term=.1931b1a21c56
Yes, count them all. It is time for a thoroughgoing audit of Florida and Georgia voter registration BTW.
Winter is showing its stripes now. Leaves are down, we’ve had frost on the cars and this morning I saw the first snowflakes of the 18-19 winter. Shit.
msn:
Vladimir Putin is breathing new life into the chicken that kept Russians fed in the dying days of communism. The project is a hedge against potential U.S. food sanctions and a challenge to the two western breeders that supply all of the nation’s commercial strains.
After a series of setbacks that included a mysterious outbreak of avian flu and the forced culling of 200,000 test fowl last year, the revamped Soviet broiler is finally ready for market trials, according to Vladimir Fisinin, the 78-year-old head of the Russian Poultry Union and one of the developers of the proprietary line.
The goal is to fill any shortfall created by U.S. curbs on shipments of the eggs and chicks that eventually become Russia’s main source of protein. The U.S. hasn’t threatened to include food in the penalties it started imposing in 2014, at least not publicly. But Fisinin, who was born on a collective farm in Siberia on the eve of World War II, said his country needs to prepare for the worst when dealing with an increasingly unpredictable White House.
“Who the hell knows what fool will come next, like this Mr. Trump,” Fisinin said in an interview in Sergiev Posad, a 14th century monastic center 75 kilometers north of Moscow. He was speaking in his office at the research facility where he’s been tinkering for half a century.
Fisinin was part of the team of specialists who helped Soviet food science keep pace with the West by developing a bigger and tastier version of Gallus gallus domesticus in 1972, the same year Leonid Brezhnev hosted Richard Nixon for eight days in Moscow. Named after the guarded complex in Sergiev Posad where it was developed, the Smena, or Change, was a godsend for the Politburo, triggering a record surge in meat output that lasted through 1990.
But then the Soviet Union imploded, funding vanished and westerners with more advanced genetics swooped in, driving the bird to the brink of extinction. A subsequent series of international mergers and acquisitions left Tyson Foods Inc.’s Cobb-Vantress unit and German EW Group’s Aviagen in charge of the industry from their respective headquarters in Arkansas and Alabama.
For Putin, so much meat power in so few foreign hands is an unacceptable security risk, according to two officials involved in sanctions planning. Richard Nephew, a former State Department official who helped negotiate the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, said the U.S. has been “scrupulous to avoid sanctions on food, medicine and the like” since at least 2000, though “legally and technically, it would be fairly easy to do, either through statute or executive order.’’
Russia’s president isn’t taking any chances. And it’s not just chickens the Kremlin is worried about. Domestic growers of beef, pork, potatoes and even sugar beets, the country’s main source of sweetener, are also dependent on genetic inputs from the U.S. and Europe.
[….continues…]
Patd, I LOVE that Borowitz report item. It is a tour de force worthy of an SNL cold open.
Bill recaps the top stories of the week, including midterm election results and Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions.
The fires in California are heartbreaking. Of course, 50 years ago, the fires came in October and the rain in November. That was just the way it was. Of course towns were actually far apart and there weren’t 20 million more people with all their houses crowding into the environment so that there was nowhere for the fire to go except over them. Add in climate change and you have a conflagration that will get greater every year as the water is depleted by the drought and incapable of servicing that population continues.
And of course IMPOTUS blames the CA fires on forest mismanagement (I doubt he’s ever been in a forest) and threatens to cut off funding. That ought to fix the problem. Stupid shit.
Craig, I hope someone is listening to you. I believe there was a book called, They Can’t Cheat If It’s Not Close (or something close to that).
Just remember, there will be even more young, first-time voters to sink the Repugz in the swamp next time.
It’s time to focus on 2020.
We need a platform that pulls in everyone who isn’t a gun-loving, racist (who thinks that somehow makes them a good Christian), and, learn how to market it without apology.
We need a ticket with Elizabeth Warren or BETO somewhere on it, to motivate folks to get to the polls. Even if he’s not on the bottom of the ticket, BETO can do the work of bringing folks into the fold.
Our best bet to avoid TrumPence is to work on cleaning house now.
Trump’s pants are, perpetually, on fire.
The fire near here was set by a homeless guy who was up here burglarizing homes in the area.
If anything it’s climate change — fire season is all year long and there is no rain in the near forecast but lots of hot dry winds especially in the south.
The fake ag thinks judges should follow the new testament no Jews alllowed
Craig,
From your lips to God’s ear. Dems need to open up the books on some of those panhandle counties.
So, Mad Whittaker thinks Jarred & Ivanker should be ousted???
Matt Whitaker’s dead eyes scare me.
Breaking News: Trump to Appoint Jimmy Lebensraum to Secretary of the Interior.
Bink demonstrates historical depth and a nasty sense of humor
No military parade for Trump this weekend. Anywhere.
NY Times:
[…]
As of noon on Saturday, the deadline for the state’s counties to hand in unofficial results, three statewide races remained under the 0.5 percentage point margin for a legally required machine recount: the Senate race between Mr. Scott, a Republican, and Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat; the governor’s race between Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, and the commissioner of agriculture race between Nikki Fried, a Democrat, and Matt Caldwell, a Republican.
Secretary of State Ken Detzner, an appointee of Mr. Scott, was expected to formally order the recounts on Saturday afternoon. The new tallies were expected to begin as early as Saturday afternoon in the state’s largest counties, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Other counties could also proceed immediately, though many were expected to wait until Sunday to begin.
[…]
Each county in Florida will have until Thursday to run all of its ballots through counting machines again. At that point, any race that remains within a margin of 0.25 of a percentage point or less will have another three days, until Nov. 18, to conduct a manual recount.
Manual recounts seem almost certain in the races for Senate and commissioner of agriculture, which are already within that quarter-point margin.
A manual recount does not mean every ballot is counted by hand.
Only the votes that come up as an “undervote” or “overvote” get pulled for manual review. For example, if a voter had put a check mark next to a candidate’s name instead of filling the circle out completely, the machine could have missed it.
In cases where the machine detects that a person actually chose two people in the same race, a team of election workers looks at the ballot to see if the voter’s intention was clear. The person could have crossed out one candidate’s name, so that ballot would likely be counted.
But several issues could arise during the process. Older counting machines might be unable to conduct an unprecedented three statewide recounts simultaneously, making it impossible to meet the state’s deadline. If a county is unable to complete a recount in any particular race, Saturday’s unofficial results from that county would stand for that race.
[…]
Mr. Scott claimed fraud in Broward County even though the state was monitoring Dr. Snipes’s office during the election. The state’s division of elections assigned two staffers to watch how the election was administered, visit polling places and observe the preparation of voting equipment and procedures.
The monitors made no reports of fraud.
“Our staff has seen no evidence of criminal activity at this time,” Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for the division of elections, said on Saturday.
The odds that Mr. Gillum, who trails by about 33,600 votes, or 0.41 percentage points, and even Mr. Nelson, who is behind by less than 13,000 votes, or about 0.15 percentage points, will find themselves on top after a recount seem low, according to veterans of Florida’s presidential recount in 2000.
Marc Elias, Mr. Nelson’s attorney, has maintained that a machine error might still account for fewer votes for Mr. Nelson — an issue that would only be caught in a manual recount.
“Ultimately, the ballots are what they are,” he said. “The votes are what they are.”
wapo:
November 10 at 1:44 PM
As heavily Democratic counties in South Florida scrambled to meet a Saturday deadline to report election returns, Republican Rick Scott’s lead over Democrat Bill Nelson in the U.S. Senate race shrunk to just 12,562 votes out of nearly 8.2 million votes cast, ensuring a recount.
Vote totals posted Saturday showed the margin in the marquee race in the nation’s biggest battleground state at .015 percent, close enough to trigger a recount by machine. Also hitting that threshold was the race for governor between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis, who is sitting on slightly bigger cushion of 33,684 votes over Gillum.
In Broward and Palm Beach counties Saturday morning, attorneys from both parties quibbled over ballots in which the intent or eligibility of the voter was in doubt as the minutes ticked toward a noon deadline. Scott’s narrowing lead as vote-counting continued this week has provoked litigation and raucous street protests reminiscent of the contentious 2000 election, as well as accusations by President Trump of “election theft.”
Scott, who has also raised allegations of fraud, used his bully pulpit Saturday to encourage Florida sheriffs to keep an eye out for any violations of election laws.
But the claims by the president and the governor were undercut Saturdayby the Florida Department of State, which said in a statement it found “no evidence of criminal activity at this time. ” The department, which oversees elections, had sent two monitors to observe Tuesday’s vote in Broward County as result of a lawsuit over the mishandling of ballots in a 2016 congressional race.
A spokeswoman for the state department, Sarah Revell, said the observers were sent to “monitor the administration of the election, including visiting polling locations throughout the day as needed and observing preparation of the voting equipment and procedures for the election.” The monitors have continued to monitor the vote-counting this week.
Nelson has accused Scott of using the power of his office to try to secure his Senate victory. Earlier this week, the governor called for state law enforcement to investigate the voting in South Florida — a probe that the state agency has so far declined to begin because the state department has not presented any allegations of fraud.
Under Florida law, a statewide machine recount is conducted when the margin of victory is less than 0.5 percent, and a manual recount is ordered if the margin is less than 0.25 percent. The governor’s race does not appear to meet the manual recount standard, according to Saturday’s tally.
A manual recount is defined as “a hand recount of overvotes and undervotes set aside from the machine recount,” centering on ballots in which voters skipped a race or voted for two candidates in one race.
Officials from both parties have focused much of their ire on Brenda Snipes, supervisor of elections in Broward County, Forida’s second-largest county and the site of the “hanging chads” and other ballot irregularities during the 2000 presidential recount.
In a brief interview, Snipes brushed off the criticism. “It’s kind of like a hurricane, where things get really stirred up for a while and then it passes,” she said. “I don’t know when this will pass, but it will.”
The battle is also playing out on a national level, as the Scott campaign arranged for Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to complain about the vote-counting in a call with reporters. He compared the situation in Florida to the contentious confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Graham encouraged Scott to report to Washington next week for orientation for new senators, regardless of the recount. “If the recount goes, the recount goes,” said Graham.
Scott campaign manager Jackie Schutz Zeckman said the governor’s team was still working on his schedule.
me too, mark
Mark Shields [last night on PBS Newshour discussing the latest trump vs press fight]:
” I just wish Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas had had a shot at this guy, I mean, to ask tough questions.”
Florida secretary of state orders recounts in U.S. Senate, governor races.
Not just Broward but everywhere?
Rick Scott’s own Secretary of State ordering a recount. Imagine that. Rick ain’t gonna be happy.
Bink
That comes under the heading of why I love this blog … people who know stuff. The living space here sometimes gets stretched to its absolute limits.
Some staffer had to do a clean up tweet for Trump sending sympathy to those who had lost lives and property in CA after he sent one this morning threatening to cut the budget.
Firefighters Respond to President Trump’s Tweet
IN the category “It is amazing what is hidden in old trunks and attics that find their way online.”
Last night was the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht an anniversary needs to be remembered in these years.
These pictures were posted on twitter, They were taken by Nazi photo journalists documenting the event.
Jack
Pax Americana.
Sometimes a picture says it all Our leadership in the world has been important in making this a freer and safer world. If we are to avoid a WWIII it still is.
According to the Arizona Republic, Sinema’s lead over McSally has widened to more than twenty eight thousand votes. Still more votes to count.
Jack,
Thanks for the Kristallnacht link. Very good pictures and an event that should never be forgotten. Especially now.
Hope things are going well for you and .Mrs. Jack
jack, thank you for linking those Kristallnacht photos. as the lady said
You tell us “never again.” I’m not so sure.
considering what horror took place here in sanctuaries such as Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston and Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the planned mass shooting at an Islamic Center in Jacksonville fortunately foiled, it’s too late for “never again” … I shuddered at seeing white supremacists thumbs up photos at the white house.