screengrab from https://twitter.com/pemalevy/status/1063419479856541698

Florida Senator Bill Nelson has said that he was confident that once “all the votes were counted” in Broward and Palm Beach counties that enough mystery votes would be found to overcome his vote deficit and win re-election. After missing the state deadline for machine recount results yesterday, Broward began their hand recount this morning at 7 a.m.

At each table, volunteers will be sorting ballots. Here’s what each station looks like. pic.twitter.com/lc67duEkh9

— Pema Levy (@pemalevy) November 16, 2018

They were planning to be done by midnight but they finished in under three hours.

Broward County already done w/ senate hand recount. Volunteers getting sent home. No results yet, but things are overall looking bleaker and bleaker for @SenBillNelson.

— Evan Halper (@evanhalper) November 16, 2018

And the results aren’t good. This is from Mother Jones,

The hand recount in Broward is over for the Senate race. It was a blur it went so fast. Looks like Nelson didn't come close to making up the ground he needs. https://t.co/JNYAGpmSNk

— Pema Levy (@pemalevy) November 16, 2018

The Nelson team was confident that, in addition to thousands of mystery ballots appearing, the large number of undervotes in the Senate race were the result of a machine reading error, and not of voters deciding to simply not vote for either candidate. He bet wrong:

Here at table 79, they blew through a packet of ballots in about a minute. All “no vote” in the Senate race. If it happens like this all day, it’s bad news for Nelson. His team is betting that the undervote in Broward was a machine issue, not that ppl skipped the Senate race pic.twitter.com/AcC82wTVNu

— Pema Levy (@pemalevy) November 16, 2018

Same thing happening at table 99. A lot of no votes in Senate race. pic.twitter.com/MUQFIaLrdk

— Pema Levy (@pemalevy) November 16, 2018

Folks on the floor here in Broward seem to agree that the vast majority of ballots here are “no votes” in the Senate race. Bad news for Nelson, who needs to pick up thousands here. Not on track to do that.

— Pema Levy (@pemalevy) November 16, 2018

If Broward is off the table as a vote sump for Nelson, then this race is basically settled and Rick Scott is the new senator from Florida.

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