‘Be ready for a recount’: Rick Scott talks lessons of 2018 Senate race

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott expects a close election Tuesday night in Florida, and offered advice Monday night to interested parties.

“Be ready for a recount,” the first-term Republican said on Newsmax in response to questions about the recount in the 2018 U.S. Senate race and potential parallels with the race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden

Scott told host Sean Spicer that “you’ve got to be ready for a recount” given the likelihood of yet another close election in the state.

“Be ready for a recount. You’ve got to be ready for a recount. You’ve got to assume you’re going to have a recount,” the Senator told Spicer, famous before broadcasting for high-level stints in both the Trump White House and the Republican National Committee.

“Unfortunately, we have to have in these races now a lot of lawyers. We’ve got to have a lot of people watching the polls,” Scott said.

“In my race in 2018, they found 95,000 ballots after Election Night. That’s inconsistent with the law, but we had activist judges who allowed that to happen.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen this time. I don’t think it’s going to happen this time,” Scott said.

Scott’s 2018 race against Sen. Bill Nelson indeed was close: The manual recount cut Scott’s lead over Nelson to just 10,033 votes, or 0.12 percent of more than 8.1 million votes cast.

Machine recounts come into play when the margin in the unofficial vote is under 0.5%.

Manual recounts of overvotes and undervotes can come into play if the margin is 0.25% or less after the machine recount.

Despite Scott’s worries about a recount, he said he thought Trump would have a “nice win in Florida, probably bigger than he had last time.”

The Senator said similar things in a media blitz Monday morning, saying on the Fox News Channel that he “absolutely” expected a Florida winner to be known Tuesday night.