Trump seeks end of Florida recount as GOP leads shrink

The president instead called on state authorities to go with the initial vote count totals. Trump alleged voter fraud had taken place, but provided no evidence.

"The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!" he wrote.

Studies have found no evidence of large-scale voter fraud in the United States, although courts have found evidence through the nation's history of policies intended to suppress voting by minorities.

"The fact is that there is no evidence of fraud," said Marc Elias, the lawyer representing Nelson's campaign in the recount. "Both judges and the state law enforcement officials have said that."

Nelson on Monday called on Scott to recuse himself from playing any role in overseeing the recount.

The Florida secretary of state's office said it had received reports that election officials in Bay County, a Republican-leaning county home to some 183,500 people that was hard hit by Hurricane Michael, allowed some residents to cast ballots by email and fax. State law makes no provision for voting in that way.

"Supervisors of elections are independently elected constitutional officers and it is each supervisor's responsibility to adhere to the law," state spokeswoman Sarah Revell said in an email.

Florida law gives local election officials until the Saturday after an election to submit their first round of unofficial election results. It is common for elections supervisors to process results well after election night.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which has said it will review allegations of criminal fraud, has stated that it had no active investigations.

Scott has said he won the Senate race even as the ballots are tallied again, telling Fox News on Monday: "I want to make sure there's a free and fair election. But there's laws. Comply with the laws."

Neighboring Georgia's gubernatorial race also remains undecided as does the US Senate contest in Arizona. Several U.S House of Representative races are also still too close to call. Democrats seized control of the House in last week's elections.

The Democratic National Committee and veterans' advocacy group VoteVets Action Fund filed a new lawsuit on Monday asking a federal judge to order Florida officials to accept all mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, rather than only those received by 7 pm that day, the same time that polls closed.

The lawsuit noted that nearly 875,000 of the 3.5 million vote-by-mail ballots requested this year had not been counted as received by the Nov 6 deadline.

Reuters