Midterms still strained in Georgia, Florida and Arizona

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• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  Too close to call in a politically divided America. The results of the midterm elections are not surprisingly very, very close and in several states the vote count is not complete. In Florida today the secretary of state ordered machine recounts in three races including for U.S. Senate and governor. For more on what's next there and in key races in Georgia and Arizona we turn now to Miles Parks, a reporter for NPR's Washington desk, who's covering the vote counts and possible recounts along with charges and countercharges about possible fraud. He joins us now from Washington D.C. Miles here we are several days after the election and the election is continuing in state after state of Georgia. Let's start there.

• MILES PARKS:

  Yeah absolutely. So Georgia is a really interesting case where we've got two candidates kind of living in two separate universes. You've got Republican Brian Camp who is secretary of state. He has resigned his post as secretary of state and it has basically begun a celebration tour, talking as if he has won this election whereas Democrat Stacey Abrams has not yet conceded the Associated Press has yet to call this race and votes are still coming in. Basically Brian camp is saying that the vote margin is much too large to possibly trigger this automatic recount or an automatic runoff election whereas the Abram's campaign is saying provisional ballots are still being counted some absentee ballots in some parts of states are still coming in and they want to wait for all the votes to come in before they concede. They're even saying that they're already buying TV ads in preparation for a runoff election even though that seems a little premature at this point.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  How far away from that threshold is the vote count in Georgia?

• MILES PARKS:

  At this point. It was about 63000 Brian Kemp lead on Stacey Abrams was about 63000. But that doesn't Stacey Abrams need to make up that and take up the lead. All she needs to do what her campaign says is about net about 26000 votes would put it into the place where a recount would be triggered and 24000 but excuse me 26000 votes would trigger a runoff election whereas 24000 votes netting 24000 votes would trigger a recount.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  All right let's talk about Arizona a hotly contested race there.

• MILES PARKS:

  Yeah absolutely. And this is a place that hundreds of thousands of votes still have yet to be counted but Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has taken over a slight lead over Republican Martha McSally. What's really interesting here is you're not seeing this contest turn into a super partisan battle yet. The Republicans, the governor who was just the elected on Tuesday came out with a statement and said basically we want to let this process continue. We want democracy to work as it should. We want all the votes to be counted before we name a winner and there's been no talk of funny business on either side. They're just letting these votes come in a lot of votes in Arizona or vote by mail ballots so they take a lot longer to count than traditional day of voting.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  All right and finally Florida multiple races this is almost a flashback to 2000 recount recount lawyers. Countersuits.

• MILES PARKS:

  Yeah absolutely. We're seeing three statewide races at this point going to a recount which is really interesting. This is the first statewide recount for statewide office in Florida's Florida's history. You've got the Commissioner of Agriculture with which no one is talking about at this point headed to a recount. And then the two races that we've been following closely really for much of this year the governor's race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron Desantis. It has now crossed the threshold under this half a percentage point margin that would trigger an automatic recount. And then the Senate race is even closer than that it right now. Democrat Bill Nelson trails Republican Rick Scott by less than a quarter of a percentage point which would not only trigger an automatic machine recount but if in Florida by Florida state law. If you're under that quarter percentage point it also triggers a mandatory hand count for some of the ballots. Wow.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  All right Miles Parks of NPR. Thanks so much for joining us.

• MILES PARKS:

  Yeah thank you. Hari.