Hundreds of uncounted ballots could send a pair of undecided midterm races in Central Florida to recounts this week.
Under Florida law, mandatory recounts are triggered if the second-place candidate is within 0.5% of the first-place finisher.
In Florida’s seventh congressional district, Republican Ryan Elijah has a 0.53% lead over Democrat Bale Dalton. Eighty more votes for Dalton would trigger a recount.
In the ninth district, incumbent Democrat Darren Soto has a 0.52% lead over Republican Dan Green. That’s just 53 votes shy of Florida’s threshold for an automatic recount.
“This is very close, so it's possible that it'll trigger a recount,” said Kari Ewalt with the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Office.
But changing the leader would require a lot more votes, she explained: “In a race this big, 0.5% is a lot of votes.”
Green needs to make up nearly 1,500 votes to win his race. Dalton needs even more.
But Ewalt says she hasn’t ever seen a large race here change with such a big deficit.
“If we end [up with] a recount at 0.5% difference, I do not believe that the outcome overall would change after a recount,” she said.
The outstanding ballots come from a mix of sources.
Some were cast provisionally. Voters knew that they would need to be reviewed and could be disqualified.
Others are mail-in ballots with signatures that didn’t match the ones on file with election offices. Voters can submit an affidavit to county election officials by 5 p.m. Thursday.
And military and overseas voters can request a 10-day extension on mailing in their ballots.
Together, they amount to potentially thousands of outstanding votes.
County election supervisors will be tallying the final batches at the end of the week.
