Florida Senate race: Hand count ordered

The second count of votes for the Senate race in Florida ended on Thursday (local time), prompting state authorities to order a manual recount of votes after 12,600 votes separated Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson from Republican Rick Scott.

No manual recount has been ordered for the governor's post, where Republican Ron DeSantis lead a 0.41 per cent margin over Democrat Andrew Gillum, according to the Washington Post. Gillum mentioned that he would not concede in a statement.

Hillsborough County, Palm Beach County, and Broward County did not submit a new figure for the machine recount and instead, relied on last week's counts.

Manual recounts have also been ordered for the race for agriculture commissioner in the state.

Speaking on the issue of mismatched signatures, Scott's campaign spokeswoman Lauren Schenone stated, "We are confident we will prevail," as the incumbent Florida Senator Nelson filed a suit seeking a public list of voters with mismatched signatures.

These actions came in the wake of a two-day extension being granted for at least 4,000 voters to resolve their mismatched signature issues by Judge Mark Walker of Tallahassee's US District Court on Thursday.

A second recount had been ordered amid allegations of fraud from the candidates in Florida earlier this week.