Even Brian Nathan thought his race against Republican Josie Tomkow was going to a recount.
The union leader and Democrat flipped Florida’s District 14 Senate seat blue last Tuesday night, but was not quite within the 0.5% margin of victory to avoid a recount. Still, most credible news sources called the race for Nathan after his opponent’s concession.
This morning, around 10:15 a.m., the 45-year-old told WMNF public affairs program “Down N Dirty” that canvassing board met this morning and said there would be a machine recount on March 31.
“But I’m not concerned,” he told the Tampa Bay community radio station. “We’ve looked at the math every which way we can. There aren’t enough outstanding votes to change the election. This is the process we have to go through.”
Turns out he can totally move on and focus on his new job. Just after 4:30 p.m. this afternoon, the Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections (SOE) said there will be no recount in Florida’s special election for State Senate District 14.
The SOE also shared this statement from Florida’s Division of Elections:
“There were a total of 80,069 votes in the race with 39,832 votes for Tomkow and 40,237 votes for Nathan. One half of a percent of the total 80,069 is 400 votes and therefore there must be a difference of 400 votes or less to trigger a recount. The vote difference in this race is 405 votes. Therefore, no recount has been triggered. The percentages on the Florida Election Watch website are rounded, giving the appearance of exactly .5% difference between 49.75% (Tomkow) and 50.25% (Nathan). The election results software that the Division has always used for calculating recounts does not round numbers.”
As previously reported, Florida Law states that a machine recount must be ordered if the first set of unofficial returns, which were certified today, indicates that a candidate was defeated by one half of 1% or less of the total votes cast for the office.
The SOE added that Hillsborough’s canvassing board will certify the official results and conduct a post-election audit to verify tabulated results on Monday, April 6 at 10 a.m.
This is a developing post.
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This article appears in Mar. 26 – Apr. 1.