Florida election recount continues amid tensions
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Mishaps, protests and litigation dominated Florida’s first day of recounting the vote for pivotal races for governor and Senate, bringing back memories of the 2000 presidential fiasco.
Much of the drama on Sunday centered on Broward and Palm Beach counties, home to large concentrations of Democratic voters.
In Broward County, the recount was delayed for several hours Sunday morning because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. That prompted the Republican Party to slam Broward’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, for “incompetence and gross mismanagement.”
Broward officials faced further headaches after they acknowledged the county mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected. The problem seemed impossible to fix because the dismissed ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots and Snipes said it would be unfair to throw out all of those votes.
By the end of the day, Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate, filed suit against Snipes in a circuit court. He sought a judge’s order that law enforcement agents impound and secure all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots “when not in use until such time as any recounts.” The lawsuit accused Snipes of repeatedly failing to account for the number of ballots left to be counted and failing to report results regularly as required by law.
Democrat Abrams files new suit in Ga. governor’s race
ATLANTA (AP) — Stacey Abrams’ Democratic campaign filed a federal lawsuit Sunday asking a judge to delay vote certifications in Georgia’s unsettled governor’s race by one day and to make officials count any votes that were wrongly rejected.
If successful, the suit would prevent officials from certifying county vote totals until Wednesday and could restore at least 1,095 votes that weren’t counted. The campaign said thousands more ballots could be affected.
Republican Brian Kemp’s campaign didn’t have any immediate comment on the lawsuit, filed over alleged problems in populous Gwinnett and DeKalb counties in metro Atlanta. But Kemp aides previously said Abrams has no path to victory and called her refusal to concede a “disgrace to democracy.”
Abrams’ campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, said the state’s numbers can’t be trusted and that 5,000 votes came in Saturday that previously were unknown.
“This race is not over,” she said on a conference call with reporters. “It’s still too close to call.”
Critics rebuke senator’s ‘public hanging’ remark
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A newly published video shows a white Republican U.S. senator in Mississippi praising someone by saying: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who faces a black Democratic challenger in a Nov. 27 runoff, said Sunday that her Nov. 2 remark was “exaggerated expression of regard” for someone who invited her to speak and “any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”
Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings of black people. The NAACP website says that between 1882 and 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings in the United States, and nearly 73 percent of the victims were black. It says Mississippi had 581 during that time, the highest number of any state.
Hyde-Smith is challenged by former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy.
“Cindy Hyde-Smith’s comments are reprehensible,” Espy campaign spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement Sunday.
“They have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country. We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state.”
Pabst says MillerCoors is trying to put it out of business
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Pabst Brewing Company and MillerCoors are going to trial, with hipster favorite Pabst contending that MillerCoors wants to put it out of business by ending a longstanding partnership through which it brews Pabst’s beers.
The case has high stakes for Pabst, whose lawyers argue that the company’s very existence relies on the partnership with Chicago-based MillerCoors, which produces, packages and ships nearly all its products, which include Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee, Natty Boh and Lone Star. MillerCoors, meanwhile, says it’s not obligated to continue brewing for Pabst and that Pabst doesn’t want to pay enough to justify doing so.
The trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court begins Monday and is scheduled through Nov. 30.
Pabst’s attorneys have said in court documents and hearings that MillerCoors LLC is lying about its brewing capacity to break away from Pabst and capture its share of the cheap beer market by disrupting Pabst’s ability to compete.