2018 Midterm Results, Comments

Now that it seems we can finally report on the Florida election results after recounts, ballot design controversy, impromptu election fraud accusations, and tabulating machine breakdowns have headlined news stories of late concerning the two very close races for governor and United States Senator.  Regarding what happened in south Florida, I'm all for the votes all getting counted...but for the entire state, not just those counties that were going for one party over the other.  And it is wrong to take ballots and "assume" the voters' intentions when they are not explicitly stated...we went through all this nonsense before in the presidential election of 2000 as well as the very close Democratic primary for governor in 2002.  And what fool in Broward County designed the ballot to put the all-important Senate race at the bottom of the first column following the long, boring instructions section...apparently many thousands of voters (I'd call them fools as well) just skipped on to the next column and didn't vote on the Nelson-Scott contest, to Nelson's detriment since this county was polling 2-1 for the Democrats.  Well, now that all this nonsense is over, I feel I can finally get on to reporting on the different results for this 2018 midterm election...

For Florida governor, Republican Ron DeSantis won a tight race over Andrew Gillum, and incumbent US senator Bill Nelson lost his contest to Rick Scott...a flip for the Republicans in that body.  Republican incumbent Ted Yoho breezed to reelection against Democrat Yvonne Hayes Hinson in my Congressional District 3. Keith Perry won another close race in my own state senate District 8 over strong Democratic challenger Kayser Enneking.  My own state house district wasn't on the ballot...incumbent Clovis Watson ran without opposition.  Democrat Marihelen Wheeler won the Alachua County Commission District 2 seat and the judge retention questions all went "yes".  For the state cabinet positions, all went to the Republican candidates except for Agriculture, which went for Democrat Niki Fried. Gloria Walker won for circuit judge as did Meshon Rawls for county judge.  For the twelve state constitution amendments, only Amendment 1 was rejected (and narrowly at that).  Locally, the only defeated measure was the one proposing outside control of the GRU utility...

Regarding judge retention and constitutional questions, I believe a lot of voters weren't interested or informed about these items and tended to just bubble in "yes" or "no" on them according to their own general dispositions.  I heard from somewhere that this midterm election saw nationwide a 49% voter turnout...much higher than usual but still, in my opinion, abysmally low.  Well, we have our results: the US Senate, with next month's Mississippi runoff election almost certainly going to the Republican incumbent, will be a 53-47 Republican majority while right now it looks as if the Democrats have flipped the US House of Representatives with about 233 seats to the Republicans' 199...3 others yet to be resolved.  So I suppose now that this election is over with, all the buzz in the media will shift to the 2020 election for president: it just never ends, does it...