Democratic candidate threatens lawsuit unless Miami-Dade releases election-night records in District 26 race
A candidate for Florida's 26th Congressional District is threatening legal action if she does not receive voting records from election night.
CBS News and other outlets have projected Republican Mario Diaz Balart as the winner over Democrat Nicole Locklin by 0.8 percentage points, 114,578 to 112,874.
However, Locklin questioned the overall totals during a news conference.
"One of the most basic promises of our democracy is that every eligible vote is counted and that the officials entrusted with our elections can explain clearly and publicly how the results were reported," Locklin said.
On election night, Locklin initially declared victory based on Associated Press numbers, but later questioned why approximately 3,000 votes were removed from her total. The AP attributed the shift to a reporting error.
"A data entry error caused an incorrect vote total to briefly appear for Nicole Locklin in Florida's 26th congressional district race," the AP said in a statement.
Locklin argued the statement remains incomplete. "But that statement does not explain why the higher figure was also retrieved from Miami-Dade's public reporting data by civicAPI and, according to people who operate other independent data services, observed by them as well," she said.
CBS News Miami reached out to civicAPI regarding her statement but did not immediately hear back.
Locklin is demanding tabulation records from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections office and threatening a lawsuit if they are not made available.
The elections office was closed Wednesday for the Veterans Day holiday.
Following a recount completed Tuesday for the District 27 congressional race, Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia defended the integrity of her office.
"Everything I do as Supervisor of Elections and everything our office does is conducted openly and transparently and in strict accordance with Florida law," Garcia said.
A spokesman for Garcia added Wednesday: "There were no results reporting errors at the Miami-Dade Office of Elections".