Orange County machine recount wraps up without major shift in vote tallies

Nine days removed from the Nov. 6 election, there's at last a light at the end of the midterms tunnel as the Orange County vote canvassing board has wrapped up its machine recounts of the state's most competitive races.

According to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office, the percentage differences between candidates remain unchanged, even though the total amount of votes dipped slightly from the total reported last week to the Florida Division of Elections, from 479,122 votes to 478,999.

For the race for U.S. Senate between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson and term-limited Republican Gov. Rick Scott, in Orange County, the percentages remain the same as last week: 61.76 percent for Nelson, 37.97 percent for Scott.

Orange County's reported numbers remain the same in the governor's race between Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis: 62.22 percent for Gillum, 36.60 percent for DeSantis.

And as for the Agriculture Commissioner race between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell, the reported totals among Orange County voters remained the same as well: 62.30 percent for Fried, 37.70 percent for Caldwell.

Orange County was the first of the Sunshine State's seven largest urban counties, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval, to report the machine recount numbers.

On the statewide level, Scott (50.07 percent) currently leads Nelson (49.92 percent); DeSantis (49.59 percent) currently leads Gillum (49.18 percent); and Fried (50.03 percent) currently leads Caldwell (49.97 percent.)

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