from what you have seen, including today s court hearings, how should we expect this fight to play out now? julia is talking about the kind of interplay between the protests on the street and what s happening in the courtrooms. given what you saw today, what should we expect? well, that ruling from the judge today set up a really dramatic couple of hours. the judge ruled two things had to happen. one, data about the volume of votes had to be handed over from county officials to rick scott s lawyers. depending on who you ask that did or did not happen. they handed over a drop box of information. but the second thing that was supposed to happen was this laying eyes on the actual ballots. so rick scott s attorneys were supposed to be allowed into that building over our shoulder to look at the data, and that did not happen. and that is the standoff that happened. you had rick scott s attorneys huddled up here watching their watches, waiting to get in and counting down to the 7:00 p.m. de
as he saw his lead slipping away last night, rick scott kind of freaked out. he is the sitting governor of florida, and last night he gathered reporters at the governor s mansion to accuse the election supervisor in broward county of engaging in, quote, rampant fraud. rick scott said he will not let, quote, unethical liberals steal this election. he then announced that he filed lawsuits against broward county and palm beach county, and he announced that he had asked the florida department of law enforcement to investigate the vote count in his own election. once you ve got the state s governor threatening to sick law enforcement on vote counters in his own race, it is probably time to send some folks down there to see what the heck is going on. so we sent two of our own intrepid producers, julia nutter and lisa ferry down to florida in broward county this morning zero notice. we decided last night during the show somebody s got to go. julia and lisa were we re tired, but we ll go. sure
the data they came for there are have been fast-moving developments on this front in the last hour or two. fortunately we have our crack sleepless team to fill us in. joining us outside the vote tabulation center are two of my colleagues, two producers from the rachel maddow show, julia nutter and rachel. you guys, thank you for being there. we appreciate it. any time. happy to do it. julia, let me start with you. you have been in the middle of the broward county protest since this morning. can you just tell us about the character of the protest and how it changed throughout the day. yeah, i mean, when i first got here, i just came because i wanted to see what it looked like to tabulate votes in broward county, particularly in a fraught time as this. i didn t expect there to be much of a protest at all. and it turns out when i arrived there were about 150 to 200 protester here is loudly chanting. i heard them across the parking lot when i arrived. it was a little it was a l
so you re saying that it was pretty much an all-day-long affair, but it has dissipated this evening. yes. as we ve gotten into later hours. julia, can you tell me if it seem liked the people who were there were trying to be intimidating to the people who were trying to do the counting. was this actually an effort to try to push the elections workers to do one thing or another, or was this just people expressing themselves? i think it definitely the air that i felt from people i was talking to, the reason why they were here, and many whom don t even live in broward county, many just heard this was happening and have come from all over the state that. wanted to make it clear that they were watching, and that someone was watching the people doing the counting. and that was really why they were here. that s why they were crowding the door. that s why they were here trying to get among journalists, because they wanted to be a part of watching that go down. and so, yeah, it was a
i spoke to rick gaetz attorneys. they said we are contemplating holding them in contempt of court. 45 minutes after the deadline they came to this compromise which nobody saw coming. at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, rick scott s attorneys will be allowed into the room and they ll be able to lay eyes on the ballots. and that means tomorrow is a really big split-screen day. 10:00 a.m. tomorrow behind our shoulders, they re going to be looking at the ballots. and in palm beach, you re going to have this hearing about the other rick scott case about duplicate ballots. so buckle up. tomorrow is a big day. lisa ferry, julia nutter, my buddies. it has been great to have the two of you on the ground there for us gathering the news, talking to people, trying to get our arms around this story. i owe you both a couple of days off. i am very grateful that you guys are there today. thank you so much, my friends. thank you, rachel. we are going to be sticking on this story. actually, one of the people