11-09-2012, 10:09 AM
With this, Obama only lost two states that he won in 2008. Indiana, and North Carolina. 332 electoral votes for his column.
Quote:The results still aren't official, but it looks like President Obama can put Florida's 29 electoral votes in his column. Though, in the end it didn't really matter.http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/poli...5216.story
Obama delcared victory early Wednesday morning, several hours after the polls closed and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had conceded on national television. But Florida remained up for grabs.
As of Thursday afternoon, Broward, Duval and Palm Beach Counties were still counting absentee votes. Miami-Dade finished earlier in the day and with their votes Obama leads 4,185,616 to 4,127,520. With that news, and the knowledge that most of the uncounted votes are in Democratic heavy areas, Democrats delcared victory.
Said Democratic Party Chair Rod Smith: "Florida Democrats ran the strongest, largest ground game this state has ever seen: out-registering Republicans for 8 consecutive months, cutting the GOP's historical absentee ballot advantage in half, requesting over a million Democratic absentee ballots for the first time in history, and out-pacing Republicans during every day of early voting, and this hard work has paid off."
Romney Florida advisor Brett Doster also told the Miami Herald that the Romney camp was conceding Florida.
Now, state officials are just sitting and waiting for the official results to come in. Broward, Duval and Palm Beach continue to count – Broward had 8,000 left at 4 p.m. – and canvassing boards also began to meet to consider provisional ballots and questionable absentee votes.
"We are trying to work as fast as we can," Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Wednesday.
Unofficial results are due to the Department of State by noon Saturday. The state will certify the results on Nov. 20.
But many Floridians are wondering what led to the election day snafus.
There were no hanging chads or butterfly ballots this time. Not even any major glitches.
In contrast, even Hawaii, which is five hours behind Florida, was able to call the state right after 6 p.m. local time when the polls closed.
The fact that Florida can't call the state yet for either Obama or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has officially conceded, has put us once again in the political spotlight, and made the state the butt of national jokes.
More seriously, the images of long lines of Floridians waiting to vote have given Democrats and voting rights groups a platform to attack Republicans for changes they made in a 2011 election law that shortened the number of early voting days from 14 to eight.
Leading up to the election, Florida was already getting lots of attention.
Images of long, long lines of people in South Florida waiting to cast ballots during early voting dominated the airwaves. Many voters in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties reported waiting several hours. That continued on Election Day with some voters in Miami not getting done at the polls until about 1:30 a.m.
Even Obama seemed to have noticed, making an apparent jab at Florida in his acceptance speech early Wednesday morning.
"I want to thank every American who participated in this election whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time," he said. "By the way, we have to fix that."
And the president is not the only one saying that.
Gov. Rick Scott, when questioned last week about the long voter lines, said that seeing so many people turn out to do their civic duty was "exciting."