Illustrative image; not a photograph of the actual FL-27 recount.
A federal judge on Monday rejected a request to remove Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia from the canvassing board, while election workers continued counting ballots overnight in Florida’s 27th Congressional District. As of early Tuesday, the recount was still underway and officials had released no updated vote totals.
The ruling kept the recount moving with Garcia on the board. The count itself, nearly 250,000 ballots being processed at Miami-Dade Elections Headquarters in Doral, was expected to continue into Tuesday morning, according to CBS Miami and NBC 6.
Judge denies request to remove Garcia
U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz denied Eliott Rodriguez’s campaign’s emergency request to bar Garcia from participating in the canvassing board’s work. The campaign argued that Garcia could not be impartial because her son-in-law is an attorney for Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s campaign. It also pointed to Garcia’s comment to the Miami Herald that Salazar had won “with or without a recount,” CBS Miami reported.
Garcia maintained that she has no conflict of interest. The judge’s ruling means she remains on the board as the recount proceeds; it does not settle the election or determine what the ballot count will show.
After the ruling, Rodriguez campaign attorney Juan Carlos Planas told CBS Miami: “We are obviously disappointed, but it was very obvious that the judge saw her statement to the press as egregious. In fact, the judge even called the statement ‘stupid,’ which I think was a big thing.”
That description of the judge’s reaction came from Planas. The ruling denied the campaign’s request to remove Garcia, but the recount remains a separate process: election workers are continuing to process ballots, and no new totals had been reported early Tuesday.
The canvassing board also includes county judges Victoria Ferrer and Jose Rohaidy, according to NBC 6. The board’s role in the recount is distinct from the machine tally being conducted by election workers.
Illustrative image; not a photograph of the actual FL-27 recount.
Overnight counting continues, with no new totals
The recount began Monday at Miami-Dade Elections Headquarters, 2700 NW 87th Ave. in Doral. NBC 6 reported that workers first tested the machines, with tabulation starting shortly before 11 a.m. The Election Day ballot tally was completed Monday evening, and workers moved on to early-voting and vote-by-mail ballots.
Officials expected the count to proceed through the night and into Tuesday morning. But the overnight work had not produced a public update by early Tuesday: no updated vote totals had been released as of then. The figures still being cited are the unofficial election-night results, not recount results.
The recount involves nearly 250,000 ballots. Miami-Dade assistant county attorney Michael Valdes told NBC 6 that a ballot can be torn or damaged in a way that stops it from going through a machine. If that happens, he said, the ballot would be brought to the canvassing board for duplication.
That detail illustrates why a machine recount is not simply a matter of announcing a new number as soon as the overnight shift ends. The ballot processing has to be completed, and any ballots that cannot be run through the machine may require board review. Until the count is finished and results are reported, there is no updated recount margin to assess.
The recount follows the Digest’s Nov. 9 report on the recount’s start and the judge’s hearing. The campaign’s earlier legal challenge is outlined in the Digest’s Nov. 7 article.
Illustrative image; not a photograph of the actual recount site.
The lead and the recount thresholds
The race is between Salazar and Democrat Eliott Rodriguez. Salazar entered the recount with an unofficial lead of 1,090 votes, or 0.44%, according to CBS Miami and Telemundo. That narrow margin triggered the machine recount under Florida’s recount rules.
Florida’s 27th Congressional District is entirely within Miami-Dade County, with 230 precincts, according to Florida Election Watch. No Broward County ballots are part of this recount.
The 1,090-vote lead is a pre-recount figure. It should not be read as an updated count or as a final result. The key number to watch is the margin after the machine recount is complete: if the candidates are separated by 0.25% or less, a manual recount is required.
Deadlines ahead
The machine recount results must be submitted by 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, according to Florida Politics and the reported county schedule. If the post-recount margin meets the 0.25% threshold, the process moves to a manual recount. Otherwise, the machine recount concludes without that additional step.
Miami-Dade must certify the election by noon Monday, Nov. 16. The county’s canvassing board schedule lists the certification deadline for official results. These dates mark the remaining steps in the process; they do not predict the recount’s outcome.
For Tuesday, the immediate questions are whether counting continues as expected, which ballot categories are being processed, and when officials release the first updated totals. Until those figures are available, the election-night margin remains the only reported benchmark, and the winner of FL-27 remains undetermined.
