November 9, 2018

Donald Trump Doesn’t Want All the Votes in Florida to Be Counted

The president said he was sending “much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!”

President Donald Trump is now supporting former Florida Gov. Rick Scott's claims of fraud in the 2018 election.Don Montague/ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Three days after votes were cast, the results of elections in Georgia and Florida are still uncertain. But that hasn’t prevented the president from spreading unfounded allegations of voter fraud. On Friday morning, Donald Trump went on a tweetstorm accusing Democrats of manipulating the vote totals in Florida’s Broward County in their favor—without offering any proof to back up his claims. The razor-tight race has also led to accusations by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate currently clinging to a narrow lead in the Senate race, that Democrats are trying to “steal the election.”  

Scott has called for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes and, alongside the National Republican Senatorial Committee, his campaign has filed two emergency lawsuits against election supervisors in both Broward and Palm Beach counties for not complying with state public records laws. Trump criticized incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson for hiring lawyer Marc Elias to represent him in the recount. The president claimed he was sending “much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!”

As of Friday, Scott was up by 15,704 votes, which amounts to a 0.18 percent lead over Nelson. According to Florida law, a recount will be launched Saturday if Scott’s lead is less than 0.5 percentage points. A recount would also lead to a potential shift in the state’s gubernatorial race, which Democratic challenger Andrew Gillum only lost by 38,000 votes. Trump also called out Gillum, who conceded on election night, saying his refusal to accept the loss was “an embarrassment to our Country and to Democracy.” The president falsely stated Nelson had also conceded the election.

In an election cycle with very real concerns over voter suppression, the president took a jab at Democrats, claiming that the missing votes should be blamed on “Russians.”

The president also weighed in on the Georgia gubernatorial election, writing that Democrats need to “move on.” The results of the race are currently pending a count of nearly 25,000 provisional and absentee ballots. Democrat Stacey Abrams is hoping the remaining ballots will be enough to trigger a recount or runoff election. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Abrams’ opponent, resigned from his position yesterday after a federal court questioned whether he should oversee the counting of ballots in his own race. Kemp has been accused of voter suppression after attempting to block the voter registrations of 53,000 predominantly minority voters.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate