Lawsuit filed to force Florida recount
Yesterday a federally registered nonprofit election entity launched a fundraiser to cover the court costs of a lawsuit it intended to file in the name of forcing a statewide recount in the narrowly decided state of Florida. The attorney fees were fully crowdfunded within a matter of hours. And today the attorney in question announced that he has officially filed the lawsuit in question, creating at least some possibility that a Florida recount may happen.
Florida state law prohibits any candidate from requesting a recount, meaning that third party candidate Jill Stein cannot force a recount in the state even if she pays for the costs, as she’s doing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But this lawsuit is aimed at getting a judge to order a Florida recount, whether republican state officials want to do it or not.
Clint Curtis, the Florida attorney who has been hired to lead the legal charge in court, announced today via his official Facebook page that the election complaint is now indeed underway in the legal arena.
Donald Trump was officially named the winner in Florida, but by a razor thin margin, and only after Hillary Clinton had appeared to bank enough of an early vote lead in the state that it would have been all but mathematically insurmountable for Trump to have come back and won. If the courts do rule that a Florida recount must take place, and if the recount reveals that Clinton did get the most votes in the state, those electoral votes would be reassigned to clinton. Similar scenarios are playing out in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with the fate of the election hanging in the balance.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report