Judge: Sides in Florida recount should 'ramp down' rhetoric

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — After Republicans, including President Donald Trump, made unsubstantiated accusations of illegal activity, a judge today urged the warring sides in the Florida recount to "ramp down the rhetoric," saying it eroded public confidence in the election for Senate and governor.

The state's law enforcement arm and elections monitors have found no evidence of wrongdoing, but lawyers for the Republican party and the GOP candidates joined with Trump in alleging that irregularities, unethical behavior and fraud have taken place since the polls closed last week.

"An honest vote count is no longer possible" in Florida, Trump declared today, without elaborating. He demanded the election night results – which showed the Republicans leading based upon incomplete ballot counts – be used to determine the winner.

Trump went on to allege that "new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged," and that ballots are "massively infected." It was unclear what he was referring to.

The recount is mandated by state law.

Much of the Republicans' ire was centered on Democrat-leaning Broward County and its Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, a Democrat who was appointed in 2003 by then-Republican governor Jeb Bush. She has been re-elected four times. Critics have suggested the slow pace of ballot-counting in Broward is suspicious.

Broward elections officials have said this year's count was encumbered by the unexpectedly high turnout for a midterm election and the unusual length of this year's ballots, which contained 12 state constitutional amendment proposals, partly as a result of a constitutional revision commission that meets once every 20 years.

Bush said today on Twitter that Snipes should be removed from office, saying there was "no question" that she "failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts, undermining Floridians' confidence in our electoral process."

Snipes acknowledged "there have been issues that haven't gone the way we wanted." She said "you can call it a mistake or you can call it whatever you want to call it."

She declined to comment on Trump's remarks, except to say that "we're in an era where people oftentimes speak without having vetted the information, so I'm not sure where the president gets his information from."

She said she had not spoken with the president.

The president's allegations came just hours before Broward Chief Circuit Judge Jack Tuter had an emergency hearing on a request by lawyers for Republican Gov. Rick Scott, whose lead in the Senate race over incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson has narrowed with the counting of provisional and other ballots. They asked for additional sheriff's deputies to be sent to Snipes' office to monitor ballots and voting machines.

"I am urging because of the highly public nature of this case to ramp down the rhetoric," Judge Tuter said.

"If someone in this lawsuit or someone in this county has evidence of voter fraud or irregularities at the supervisor's office, they should report it to their local law enforcement officer," he said.