Long lines and other problems have helped craft a familiar Florida narrative. Florida still waiting, again

FORT LAUDERDALE — Just like 12 years ago, Florida found itself Wednesday as the blank on the presidential map that couldn’t be filled in the morning after Election Day.

Or even the afternoon.


This time, the outcome won’t decide the White House — President Barack Obama handily won reelection even without Florida’s 29 electoral votes. But the state remained a toss-up nonetheless, partly because counting had yet to be finished in Miami-Dade County, where confusion and long lines trapped voters in waits of up to six hours at the polls well past Tuesday’s scheduled 7 p.m. closing time.

Voters at one polling place in West Kendall didn’t finish until after 1 a.m. Wednesday, The Miami Herald reported.

County spokeswoman Suzy Trutie said workers hoped to wrap up the count by the end of the day Wednesday after reviewing the final 20,000 absentee ballots. Those ballots total roughly 100,000 pages, and election workers must review all of them by hand along with the voters’ signatures, she said.

Obama was far ahead in the heavily Democratic county based on partial results Wednesday afternoon, with 62 percent of the vote out of 851,645 ballots cast.

Statewide, Obama had 49.86 percent of the vote versus 49.28 percent for Mitt Romney, with just 48,617 votes separating them, the Florida Division of Elections said . That’s just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic recount under state law.

Besides Miami-Dade, six other counties were still tallying their absentee ballots late Wednesday, said Chris Cate, communications director for the Florida Department of State. “It’s possible we’ll still have one or two counties still counting absentee ballots tomorrow,” he said.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez told POLITICO on Tuesday night that poor planning and lack of “resources” at one of the county’s most backlogged polling places were to blame for part of the confusion. Around the state, voters complained about shortages and breakdowns of the optical scanners that read the voters’ filled-out paper ballots.

Trutie said the sheer length of the Florida ballot — five to six pages, depending on municipality — was also a factor.

Democrats complained that the ballot was swollen with 11 proposed state constitutional amendments — mainly GOP-backed proposals on topics like abortion, health care and “religious freedom” that went overwhelmingly to defeat. Another culprit, they said, was Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s refusal to extend the early-voting period, which he and the GOP-dominated legislature had shortened from 14 to eight days.

Mitch Ceasar, the Democratic Party chairman in neighboring Broward County, predicted the first-term governor will pay the price in 2014.

“I think in his attempt to suppress the vote, I think he guaranteed himself the strongest opposition of his career,” Ceasar said early Wednesday morning at a victory party near Fort Lauderdale for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman.

Still, Ceasar credited the turmoil with boosting the Democrats’ showing Tuesday. “People were in line, they were tired, they were angry, and then they wanted to get even,” he said.

Attempts to reach Scott’s office for comment were not immediately successful.

Cate said any accusations of trying to suppress the vote are “absolutely ridiculous.”

“We want as many Floridians to vote as possible, and in the most orderly and efficient way possible,” he said.