Brian Nathan won the SD 14 Special Election by a half-percentage point, but will there be a recount?

As of Friday morning, after the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) certified its first set of unofficial results in the race, Democrat Brian Nathan remained the Senate District 14 Special Election winner, with a half-percentage-point advantage over Josie Tomkow.

But based on Florida law governing mandatory recounts — required when the vote margin is at or below a half-percentage point — it’s unclear whether a recount will be required, because the statute does not provide for rounding.

Based on vote totals following the first certification, Nathan leads Tomkow by 405 votes. If you only evaluate the difference to the hundredths decimal place, that is an exact half-percentage-point difference, at 50.25% to 49.75%.

But if you look beyond the hundredths decimal, the difference is actually more than half a percentage point, at 0.5058.

As of Friday, no recount had yet been ordered. State statute places the authority to call one with the Florida Secretary of State. An inquiry sent to Florida Department of State Communications Director Gretl Plessinger asking about a potential recount was not immediately answered Friday morning.

But Hillsborough County has posted an update Friday about the results where they mention the possibility of a recount.

“Florida Law states that a machine recount must be ordered if the 1st set of unofficial returns, which were certified today, indicates that a candidate was defeated by one half of one percent or less of the total votes cast for the office,” the release said.

The clarification similarly did not address whether the half-percentage point threshold for a recount included rounding. If rounding, the vote margin between Nathan and Tomkow would be 0.51 percentage points, outside recount territory.

If a recount is ordered, the Supervisor of Elections release notes, the Canvassing Board would oversee a machine recount beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The recount, if called, would be open to the public at the SOE office located at 2514 N. Falkenburg Rd. in Hillsborough County.

Regardless, the Canvassing Board is set to certify official results and conduct a post-election audit verifying results on April 6.

Voter turnout in the race was at 26.77%, at 80,128 ballots cast. As some savvy political enthusiasts may have noticed, that turnout number does not match the actual number of ballots cast for Nathan and Tomkow. If it had, the race would be easily within recount territory without having to consider questions about rounding.

But there’s an explanation for the unaccounted ballots. A total of 80,128 ballots were cast, but only 80,069 were counted. That’s due to issues with the ballot themselves, either through ballots that were blank or those that had a selection indicated improperly, such as by circling a vote choice rather than filling in the bubble.

When a voter casts a ballot having circled their selection, it can, sometimes, be counted if that voter had made the same error in previous elections, because that establishes intent. If there is no way to establish intent, the vote is not counted.

And under Florida election laws, the only ballot cures allowed are for mail ballot signatures that do not match, meaning that if a voter cast an improper or blank ballot, they cannot fix the error after voting.

The bottom line is, the vote margin is based on actual ballots counted, not ballots cast, leaving voters in uncertain territory as it relates to a recount.