Sending lawyers to contested vote in Broward County, Florida

On Friday, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it was told by the Department of State, which is run by a Republican Scott-appointee, that they had received "no allegation of criminal activity".

Without citing any evidence of wrongdoing, Scott also asked Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate elections offices in the Democratic strongholds of Palm Beach and Broward counties, questioning whether they have been taking too long in some sort of effort to inflate the Democratic vote.

Elections officials in two large counties in the Tampa Bay area - Pinellas and Hillsborough - said they would begin recounts Sunday morning. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., sharply criticized what he described as Broward elections officials' poor handling of the official ballot count.

The announcement contrasts from Thursday night, when the agency said that it planned to investigate officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties after Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who is running to oust Sen. "No ragtag group of liberal activists or lawyers from DC will be allowed to steal this election from the voters in the state of Florida". Prior to the election, her campaign had accused Kemp of voter suppression, claiming that as Georgia secretary of state he purged and refused to certify tens of thousands of registrations, mainly of minorities.

He contends Snipes and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Boucher have fabricated votes, and he wants state authorities to take over the counts.

Two major contests in the southeastern state, for governor and US Senate, hung in the balance on Friday, three days after the contentious midterm elections that saw Democrats seize control of the House of Representatives from President Donald Trump's Republicans.

Florida law requires a machine recount when the leading candidate's margin is 0.5 percentage points or less, and a hand recount if it's 0.25 or less.

Mr Gillum had conceded but at a press conference in Tallahassee on Saturday he changed his mind, saying: "I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote".

"As soon as Democrats sent their best Election stealing lawyer, Marc Elias, to Broward County they miraculously started finding Democrat votes", Trump tweeted.

A backlash to the tightening governor and senate races grew on Friday as dozens of angry Republican voters rallied outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office where provisional ballots were still under review inside. "Don't worry, Florida - I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!"

He said Snipes' number one job as election supervisor is to know how many ballots were cast, how many were counted and how many are left to be counted. In speaking with News4Jax, he questioned the board's decision to rule out some of those ballots.

Earlier, Trump had a lot to say about Broward County's elections process as a whole.

Terri Parker of WPBF reported that lawyers for Scott told Marx on Friday that Bucher's staff was duplicating damaged ballots without the required witnesses present.

Florida's Governor Rick Scott, the Republican challenging incumbent Senate Democrat Bill Nelson, filed a lawsuit alleging fraud after his lead narrowed.

Rancor was spilling into governors' races, where Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia were aiming to become the states' first African-American leaders, but the contests were tilting in favour of their Republican rivals.

"The goal here is to see that all the votes in Florida are counted and counted accurately", he said. It's likely that many of those currently-uncounted votes will never be counted at all because of how Florida election law works.

Meanwhile, Nelson's campaign filed suit against the state over its process for validating vote-by-mail ballots.