Miami election official who already said GOP candidate won can help with recount, court rules

By Natalie Hausmann

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DORAL, FLORIDA - NOVEMBER 09: Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia prepares for the Miami-Dade County Elections Department to conduct a machine recount of ballots in Florida’s 27th Congressional District at the Miami-Dade Election Headquarters on November 09, 2026, in Doral, Florida. An automatic recount has been triggered in the Florida Congressional race between incumbent Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Florida Democratic Congressional candidate Eliott Rodriguez. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A local election official in Florida said the Republican candidate for U.S. House had won the tight race before results were called. Now, the Miami-Dade County elections chief will help administer the recount, a federal judge ruled Monday.

While U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) secured 1,090 votes over Democrat Eliott Rodriguez, the race for representation in Florida’s 27th Congressional District is still too close to call. That’s because any margin of error below 0.5% results in an automatic machine recount in the state.

That didn’t stop Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia from making a call herself on Saturday, two days before the recount was set to begin. Garcia told the Miami Herald that Salazar was “the winner, with or without a recount,” calling a Democrat win “possible but not probable.”

Rodriguez sued, calling the comments an “objective risk of prejudgment by the decisionmaker herself,” according to his complaint.

The Democratic opponent had also claimed Garcia should be blocked from the recounting process because her son-in-law represents Salazar as her attorney.

While he reportedly said Garcia made a “really dumb” statement, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz determined the election official’s comments were not enough to stop her from participating in the recount. This greenlights a conflict of interest in determining the results of a contentious House seat, as Rodriguez indicated in his lawsuit.

Garcia said on Sunday the lawsuit was a “gimmick” and claimed that Democrats sought to “taint our elections.”

“We’re doing a great job and they want to taint the good job that we’re doing,” Garcia added.

The machine recount began at 10 a.m. Monday and will determine whether House District 27 will join the ranks of Democrat wins across the red state this midterm election. Democrats won three seats — and are on track to win the final fourth — in districts Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gerrymandered to ensure GOP control.

Florida will certify its results on Nov. 17.