Analysis by Univ. of Florida professor finds Broward's poor ballot design 'may have actually disadvantaged Scott'

Greg P. | 7:13 PM on November 16, 2018

Ever since the election, we’ve been hearing that poor ballot design in Broward County, Fla. that led to an inordinate amount of undervotes in the Bill Nelson-Rick Scott race for the U.S. Senate and that this could have cost Nelson the election…

The hand recount in Broward County today suggests that ballot design cost the Democratic Senate incumbent, Bill Nelson, a lot of votes (maybe even victory). It doesn't seem to be machine error. Here's our story from last week. https://t.co/0uWLBHLmvs

— The Upshot (@UpshotNYT) November 16, 2018

…But, Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida, has analyzed the vote data and found the opposite: the bad ballot design “may have actually disadvantaged Scott”:

THREAD==>

Nelson was hoping for a machine error that would be fixed when Broward examined its undervotes. That ain't happening. This is all but over folks https://t.co/UvjsAaPmLu

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 16, 2018

I believe Scott won the election, despite the unusual Broward undervote. Scott leads statewide by 12.6K. Broward had 26.1K undervotes compared to the gov election. Nelson would need 75% of these votes. Yet, compared to the Gov race, the Sen undervotes appear to break evenly pic.twitter.com/vDglSeOL3r

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 16, 2018

(The Broward Gov minus Senate candidate totals don't equal the total undervote due to the presence of minor party candidates in the Gov race)

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 16, 2018