Despite the best efforts of Palm Beach and Broward Counties to make the voting process in Zimbabwe look like something to aspire to, by 4 p.m. today Florida–minus Palm Beach County–had finished the machine recount mandated by Florida law and Ron DeSantis emerged as victorious in his struggle with grifter and soon-to-be-indicted felon Andrew Gillum.

The machine recounts are finished in Florida. DeSantis leads Gillum by 33,683. Scott leads Nelson by 12,603. The latter race now goes to a manual recount, with associated lawfare.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 15, 2018

Bottom line: Ron DeSantis is the next governor of Florida. That is not going to change. Rick Scott is almost certainly going to prevail, too, absent a legal bombshell or the discovery of some catastrophic error.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 15, 2018

Gillum has not only withdrawn his concession but seems intent on mounting a legal challenge:

“A vote denied is justice denied — the State of Florida must count every legally cast vote,” Gillum said in a statement after the recount totals were released. “As today’s unofficial reports and recent court proceedings make clear, there are tens of thousands of votes that have yet to be counted. We plan to do all we can to ensure that every voice is heard in this process. Voters need to know that their decision to participate in this election, and every election, matters. It is not over until every legally casted vote is counted.”

He has until November 20 to find a tame and stump-broke Democrat judge to carry his water…I think the expression is “monkey up” or something like that…or the election results will be certified.

Rick Scott holds a lead over Bill Nelson that, at this writing, seems unassailable. That said, we are now heading into hand-recount territory and expect the same people who couldn’t machine count the ballots to be able to count them by hand.

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