Illustrative image; not a photograph of the Miami-Dade elections office or the FL-26 race.
Democratic congressional candidate Nicole Locklin is threatening legal action against the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections unless the office releases election-night tabulation records in Florida’s 26th Congressional District race.
The dispute is focused on how a higher vote total for Locklin appeared in reporting data and why it later changed, not on the separate recount in Florida’s 27th District. CBS News and other outlets have projected Republican Mario Diaz-Balart the winner in FL-26, with 114,578 votes to Locklin’s 112,874, a margin of 1,704 votes, or about 0.8 percentage points, according to CBS Miami.
The explanations now in public differ: the Associated Press says a data-entry error caused an incorrect total to appear briefly; Miami-Dade’s elections office says it had no results-reporting errors; and Locklin says independent data services also saw the higher figure in Miami-Dade’s public reporting data. The records she is seeking could help clarify what was reported and how.
Illustrative image; not a photograph of the Miami-Dade elections office.
What Locklin says happened
On election night, Locklin initially declared victory based on figures from the Associated Press. She later questioned why roughly 3,000 votes had been removed from her total, according to CBS Miami’s report by Manuel Bojorquez.
The AP attributed the shift to a reporting error. In a statement quoted by CBS, the news organization said: “A data entry error caused an incorrect vote total to briefly appear for Nicole Locklin in Florida’s 26th congressional district race.”
Locklin says that account does not answer a central question: why, she argues, the higher number was also available through Miami-Dade’s public reporting data. She said the figure was retrieved from that data by civicAPI and, according to people who operate other independent data services, was observed by them as well. CBS Miami reported that it contacted civicAPI and had not immediately received a response.
Locklin is demanding election-night tabulation records from the county elections office and has threatened to sue if they are not released. The available reporting describes a threatened lawsuit, not a case already filed.
In a statement to CBS, Locklin said: “One of the most basic promises of our democracy is that every eligible vote is counted and that the officials entrusted with our elections can explain clearly and publicly how the results were reported.”
Illustrative image; not a photograph of the actual election or tabulation room.
The accounts do not match
The AP’s statement points to a data-entry error that caused an incorrect total to appear briefly. Locklin’s concern is that the higher total was not visible only through the AP’s reporting: she says it also appeared in Miami-Dade’s public data and was seen by independent data services.
The county elections office, meanwhile, disputes that its own results reporting was in error. A spokesman for Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia told CBS on Wednesday: “There were no results reporting errors at the Miami-Dade Office of Elections.”
That denial and the AP’s explanation are both part of the public record. They do not, on their own, establish precisely where the incorrect figure originated or explain how it moved through the reporting process. Locklin is seeking records that she says can help resolve those questions.
The elections office was closed Wednesday for Veterans Day, CBS reported. The closure meant the office was unavailable that day as the records dispute continued to draw attention.
A records dispute, not FL-27’s recount
The two races should not be conflated. The FL-27 recount involved Republican María Elvira Salazar and Democrat Eliott Rodriguez. In FL-26, Locklin’s demand concerns election-night tabulation records and an unexplained change in her reported total.
The distinction matters for readers following this week’s South Florida news: a recount in one congressional district does not resolve questions raised about the way figures appeared in another. South Florida Digest previously covered the separate FL-27 recount and the court’s decision not to remove Garcia from the canvassing board.
After the FL-27 recount was completed Tuesday, Garcia defended her office’s conduct. “Everything I do as Supervisor of Elections and everything our office does is conducted openly and transparently and in strict accordance with Florida law,” she said, according to CBS.
That statement was made in the context of the FL-27 recount. The spokesman’s Wednesday response, specifically denying results-reporting errors at the Miami-Dade Office of Elections, addresses the office’s position on the FL-26 controversy.
Illustrative image; no actual election records or vote totals are shown.
What the records could clarify
The immediate issue is whether Miami-Dade will provide the election-night records Locklin is requesting. The records could help document how the higher figure appeared, what data was available to outside services, and how the reported totals changed. Until the relevant documentation is released or otherwise explained, the competing accounts remain unresolved.
For now, the projected outcome remains Diaz-Balart’s win by 1,704 votes. The AP says a data-entry error briefly produced an incorrect total; Locklin says the higher figure also appeared in county reporting data and was observed by independent services; and Garcia’s office says there were no results-reporting errors at the Miami-Dade elections office.
Locklin’s threatened legal action puts the focus on access to records and the public explanation of election-night data. Whether the county releases the requested material, and what it shows, will determine the next stage of the FL-26 dispute.
