Joe Scott wins Broward County Supervisor of Elections primary after two-day recount

LAUDERHILL, Fla. – It took about two days, but the machine recount inside of the Broward Supervisor of Elections office is complete. The results will stay the same with candidate Joe Scott leading the race by just a few hundred votes.

The recount began at 9 a.m. Friday and picked up again at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Ballot counting machines and poll workers were hard at work inside the Lauderhill elections office until about 6 p.m. for the recount in the primary race between two top candidates for Broward County Supervisor of Elections.

It is a position that has seen controversy before; when the governor stepped in and replaced former elections chief Brenda Snipes.

The recount of all 577 precincts in the county is required by Florida law if results are within a half percent. According to the county website, Supervisor of Elections candidate Joe Scott led Chad Klitzman by 607 votes out of a total of 207,595; a difference of point 0.3 percent.

Inside the voting equipment center, Local 10 watched board members monitoring the machine recount. Officials said early voting and election day votes were recounted Friday. On Saturday, the recount for vote-by-mail ballots began and is now complete.

The results of that race stayed at a difference of just .3 percent.

“That’s why I decided to run for Supervisor of Elections to make sure that we always get the accurate results. We always are able to report back to the people what they decided in an election,” Scott said.

The results are still considered unofficial. They will now have to go through a certification process. Once they have been accepted by Tallahassee, it will be deemed official.

Scott will be the heavy favorite in the November election, running in the heavily Democratic Broward County.

Candidate

Votes

%

Joe Scott(D)
51,58924%
Chad Klitzman(D)
50,97324%
Ruth Carter-Lynch(D)
37,51118%
Jennifer Leonard Gottlieb(D)
35,61317%
Mitchell "Mitch" Ceasar(D)
27,03513%
Tim Lonergan(D)
5,0032%
100% of Reporting

(577 / 577)


About the Authors

Roy Ramos joined the Local 10 News team in 2018. Roy is a South Florida native who grew up in Florida City. He attended Christopher Columbus High School, Homestead Senior High School and graduated from St. Thomas University.

Trent Kelly is an award-winning multimedia journalist who joined the Local 10 News team in June 2018. Trent is no stranger to Florida. Born in Tampa, he attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he graduated with honors from the UF College of Journalism and Communications.

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