It’s official: a statewide hand recount is now being performed in Florida.

The 67-county recount is a history-making first for the state, and it continues the drama of the Florida’s Senate race.

Over the past 5 days, more than 8 million votes were recounted by machine, the result of which was a margin of separation between candidates Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Gov. Rick Scott (R) of approximately .15 percentage points. Under state law, that mandates a hand recount.

The new count must be done by Sunday, in order to meet the November 20th deadline for certification of the final results.

This is complicated…

Despite the name, a manual recount doesn’t necessitate a hand counting of every ballot. Rather, officials will go through thousands of “undervotes” and “overvotes” — ballots on which are marked either too few or too many categorical selections. The Miami Herald reports there could be as many as 118,000 such ballots. Workers are tasked with determining how the under- and overvoters intended to vote.

The recount was officially ordered by Secretary of State Ken Detzner.

The race for Agricultural Commissioner between Matt Caldwell and Nicole “Nikki” Fried is similarly propelled into the weekend.

As covered fantastically by RedState’s Sarah Rumpf, as the gubernatorial contest between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum continues, Carlos Lopez-Cantera — the state’s current Lieutenant Governor — will become governor for a few days.

And the craziness of the Florida elections continues…

Stay tuned.

See 3 more pieces from me: Bill Maher explains free speech to left-wingers, a real threat of snow, and peeing in Paris.

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