As a machine recount gets underway with the fate of Florida’s Congressional District 27 on the line, a federal judge has denied the motion from the Democratic candidate’s campaign asking to remove Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections from the recount process.
Nearly a week after Election Day, just over 1,000 votes separate the Republican incumbent, U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, and her challenger, Eliott Rodriguez.
Rodriguez’s legal team filed a lawsuit against Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia, on Friday. In it, the Democratic challenger claims alleged “suspicious, questionable and potentially unlawful activity involving the processing of ballots in the FL-27 Congressional election.”
But on Monday morning, U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz denied the motion to remove Garcia from the recount process.
Meanwhile, 7News cameras captured officials inside the Office of the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections in Doral just before the recount process got started.
The Rodriguez campaign issues’ with Garcia are twofold. First, acording to The Miami Herald, Garcia said Salazar “is the winner with or without a recount” on election night.
Moreover, the lawsuit states, Garcia’s son-in-law is Salazar’s campaign attorney. This was not mentioned during the court hearing court Monday.
Despite finding issue with Garcia’s reported comment, Leibowitz agreed that it is possible but improbable that a recount would really change anything, pointing to the fact that there are two impartial state court judges on the canvassing board along with the supervisor of elections. Therefore, Garcia cannot unilaterally make a decision whether or not a vote is counted for one candidate or the other.
J.C. Planas, the attorney representing Rodriguez’s campaign, told 7News outside the federal courthouse that he’s disappointed but not really shocked by the judge’s ruling, since this was always going to be a long shot. However, they are happy that the judge at least acknowledged that Garcia’s reported remark was not a proper thing for the supervisor of elections to say initially.
