After two separate recounts, Democrats in Florida have officially flipped the mayorship of Boca Raton — a Palm Beach County community several miles south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence that hasn’t elected a Democrat to that office in around three decades.
According to WPBF, “Palm Beach County began recounts for the Boca Raton mayoral race, with the process starting Friday morning at 10 a.m.” As of the initial count on Tuesday, Andy Thompson, a Democrat and six-year city councilman, “was in the lead with 7,562 votes (39.64%), Mike Liebelson was in second place with 7,556 votes (39.61%) and Fran Nachlas was third with 3,959 votes (20.75%).”
After a machine recount and then a hand recount, the result stood, with the margin just slightly shifting, and Thomson besting his nearest Republican opponent, Liebelson, by just five votes instead of six.
According to The Palm Beach Post, Liebelson suggested without any basis that the result could have been rigged, and is weighing a legal challenge.
“Liebelson said after the recount that he wasn’t sure he will accept the results. He spoke of a ‘dump’ of 109 mail-in ballots late in the election and wondered aloud if that ‘skewed’ the result to Thomson,” said the report. “‘The people of Boca deserve to have honest elections, and we had a situation where 109 vote by mail ballots were dumped in,’ said Liebelson, who said he would ‘sleep on it’ if asked if he was planning a legal challenge.”
Republicans in Florida are advancing tough new restrictions on voting based on similar conspiracy theories propounded by Trump, modeling their bill after the national SAVE America Act. However, unlike the national bill, Florida’s legislation doesn’t curtail mail-in voting, which has been popular in the state and widely used by both parties for years.
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