Tagged: Election 2012

Miami New Times scored an interview with Anne Onymous, the reputed maker of the 47 percent video that so catastrophically damaged the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.

This week on The Florida Roundup:  Have state GOP leaders taken the election as a cue to change course? 

Daniel Smith, a professor at the University of Florida and expert on election data, says that Florida's new voting law, which cut early voting days from 14 to 8 days, limited voter participation among minorities.

Smith had long warned legislators that last year's voting law would disproportionately affect minority voters, who use early voting significantly more than other groups.

He says that his warnings months ago were right.

On Election Day this year, Florida went from having zero openly gay lawmakers in the state Legislature to two.

David Richardson won a seat in the Florida House representing Miami Beach and Joe Saunders won a seat representing a part of Orlando. Both men are openly gay.

Up until last week, Florida was the biggest state in the U.S. to have never elected an openly gay person to office in their state legislature. 

Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, says that Florida was actually part of a national trend.

Florida voters waited almost a week to hear who won the presidential election in Florida. It wasn’t until Saturday, Nov. 10 that President Obama had been declared the winner.

According to the Florida Division of Elections, only 67 percent of registered voters in Miami-Dade County cast a ballot in this election. This includes people who waited in line at the polls, and people who voted via absentee ballot.

Statewide, this number hovers around 71 percent, which is the lowest turnout in the past three presidential elections.

Following this year's close presidential election here in Florida, there were reports that Obama had won the Cuban vote, or at least he had gotten a record share of it.

However, some political researchers and professors here in South Florida don't agree that this election represented a historic shift for South Florida's Cuban-Americans -- a population that has historically voted in favor of the GOP. 

Florida may have been a laughingstock on the heels of this presidential election because of its continued inability to conduct an election without a flurry of snafus -- but it's important to note, folks, that we aren't the only state that took a long time to count ballots this year.

Nine hundred sixty-three Broward County residents finally got their votes counted on Monday after their ballots were found forgotten in an elections office warehouse.

Noting to get excited about, Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told the Sun-Sentinel.  She said it's customary for elections workers to scour the offices and work areas for forgotten ballots after the election.

"It happens," she said. "I think we've done pretty good."

Broward County is still tallying up votes in two recounts from last week’s election.  

In Dania Beach's close commission race, Chickie Brandimartie leads Mac McElyea by just 16 votes out of more than 4,000. In Hallandale Beach, it's even closer with Anthony Sanders leading Michele Lazarow by just 6 votes out of more than 7,000.

And the Sun-Sentinel reports that nearly a thousand uncounted ballots were discovered in a Broward warehouse on Monday.