* Result in key electoral battleground state largely
irrelevant
* Embarrassing delays and long lines hamper vote count
* Deadline for statewide unofficial results is Saturday
By Tom Brown
MIAMI, Nov 7 (Reuters) – It was all over but the shouting in
Florida on Wednesday, where the presidential race between Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney was still too close to call.
More than 24 hours after polls closed in Florida, election
officials said votes were still being counted in a handful of
counties and final results may not be known before the weekend.
“Every county must report their unofficial results to us by
Saturday at noon,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida’s
Secretary of State, who is responsible for elections.
He declined to predict when the race in the fourth most
populous U.S. state would be called.
Twelve years ago, when the key battleground state was a
toss-up that left the presidential race unsettled, Florida was
the cause of electoral gridlock.
This time, it hardly seemed to matter. President Obama
handily won re-election without Florida’s 29 Electoral College
votes, which was the biggest prize up for grabs in any of the
U.S. swing states.
As of Wednesday evening, Obama had 49.87 percent of the
statewide vote versus 49.27 percent for Romney, with just 49,963
votes separating them, according to the Florida Division of
Elections.
Officials throughout the state blamed an unexpectedly high
number of absentee ballots and the length of the ballots, which
included 11 proposed state constitutional amendments, for long
lines at polling places and delays in tallying final results.
But Republican Governor Rick Scott’s decision not to extend
early voting ahead of Election Day, after it was cut back from
14 to eight days by Scott and the Republican-controlled
Legislature, was also cited as causing exceedingly long voter
lines at many precincts on Tuesday.
Democrats have said repeatedly that the cutback was a part
of an unsuccessful attempt to blunt turnout in Florida by Obama
supporters.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez apologized for the long
lines in his county on Wednesday, after acknowledging that some
voters had been forced to wait up to six hours to cast their
ballots.
“That should not have happened,” said Gimenez, whose county
accounts for about 10 percent of Florida’s nearly 12 million
registered voters.
As for the glacially pace of the vote count, Gimenez said:
“We had a very long ballot. It was the longest ballot in Florida
history.”
The final margin of victory in Florida may be less than a
percentage point.
Some political pundits say the delays highlight Florida’s
seeming inability to hold elections that are free of controversy
and public mockery.
“There are so many different potential sources of
interference and conscious efforts to muck it up, we won’t know
for a while yet who to point the finger at,” said Seth Gordon, a
former political consultant based in Miami.
“We could have been there in the bulls-eye of the whole
works looking idiotic just like last time,” he said, referring
to 2000, when George Bush won Florida by 537 and captured the
White House.
“We may be just as idiotic this time, but it doesn’t matter
because no one is watching,” Gordon said. “Last time, we held up
the entire country.”
