In the Senate race, the Republican challenger, Gov. Following Tuesday's election, Rick Scott filed a lawsuit against Broward County and Palm Beach County, accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election on Thursday evening. On Thursday night, the outgoing Republican governor who has claimed victory in his U.S. Senate race again incumbent Democratic Bill Nelson, filed a lawsuit against the supervisors of elections in two South Florida counties, asking the court to order the supervisors to turn over several records detailing the counting and collection of ballots. Rick Scott, claiming south Florida election officials are fraudulently mishandling ballots, asked the state's top law enforcement agency on Thursday to investigate and filed lawsuits demanding access to ballots narrowing his lead against Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. In May Florida's Secretary of State announced increased oversight after a court found Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes broke the law by authorizing the premature destruction of ballots pertaining to a contested race following the 2016 elections. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump tweeted: "Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Rick Scott's lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson was less than 0.25 percentage points, which would require a hand recount of ballots in which tabulation machines couldn't detect a vote. Ron DeSantis, the Republican candidate who in the first unofficial results was ahead of Andrew Gillum by a margin of 0.41 percent, released a video statement on Saturday in which he said he was preparing to serve as Florida's governor

DeSantis – described in the video as the "governor-elect" – said Florida voters chose him to lead, citing "clear and unambiguous" results. Scott accused election officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties, two Democratic strongholds, of "rampant fraud" in a vote counting process that has continued two days after the election and sharply narrowed GOP leads in statewide races, even flipping the state agriculture commission race from a Republican Matt Caldwell lead to Democrat Nikki Fried advantage of more than 2,000 votes on Thursday. Once Florida counties submit their unofficial election results to the Department of State -- due at noon Saturday -- Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Scott appointee, will review the results and decide whether to order recounts. The two southern states are in the spotlight after Tuesday’s closely watched midterm elections, in which Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s Republicans and flipped a number of governorships. The Florida secretary of state has officially ordered a recount in the U.S. Senate and governor races, an unprecedented review of two major races in the state that took five weeks to decide the 2000 presidential election.
As the Florida Senate election heads to a mandatory recount, United States President Donald Trump and Rick Scott claim, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud occurred in Florida during the recent midterm election.