BC-FL--Florida President, 2nd Ld-Writethru,496

Fla. counting last presidential votes; Obama leads

%reldate(2012-11-08T20:12:13

Eds: Updates throughout with more details.

By TAMARA LUSH

Associated Press

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Two days after President Barack Obama won re-election, Florida was the only state still too close to call.

The results were so close that they could trigger a recount, bringing back memories of the 2000 election, though the votes would hardly matter.

Under Florida law, the state’s secretary of state could order a recount if Obama’s lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney finished below a half-percentage point. A manual recount could be ordered if the ended below a quarter-percentage point. On Thursday, Obama led Romney 49.9 percent to 49.3 percent — about 9,000 votes over the recount threshold.

Romney’s campaign could waive the recount. The phones at Romney’s national campaign headquarters were not taking messages Thursday and the voice mailbox at his Florida campaign in Tampa was full. Secretary of state spokesman Chris Cate said it was unclear how much a recount would cost taxpayers.

Florida is still undecided largely due to long voting lines on election night, a deluge of last-minute absentee ballots and other assorted problems. Some counties are still tallying these votes — and scrutinizing provisional ballots — and those tens of thousands of votes are essential to the state’s presidential results.

Miami-Dade County suffered the bulk of glitches and long lines, with some voters waiting until 1:30 a.m. Wednesday to cast their ballot. Local politicians vowed to figure out why lines were so long; some speculated it was the length of the ballot (there were 12 statewide constitutional amendments) while others blamed the reduction of early voting days from 14 to eight by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature.

The long lines prompted frustrated residents like Jorge Lopez-Bernal to call the state “a joke.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez asserted: “this is not a third-world country.”

“The waits were way too far,” Gimenez said. “And we’ve got to get some answers as to what happened. Why? Why wasn’t it foreseen?”

Gimenez said he would ask Gov. Rick Scott to extend early voting hours in future elections.

Scott didn’t return calls on Thursday about the voting problems from The Associated Press. On Wednesday, he said he was willing to look at whether changes are needed to make voting go smoother.

Scott came under a barrage of criticism after he refused to use his emergency powers to extend the number of days of early voting.

Scott said he will sit down with state election officials soon to discuss ways to improve the election.

Another cause of the vote logjam was absentee ballots and the fact that voters had until 7 p.m. Tuesday to drop them off.

Officials in several counties said voters handed in the sealed envelopes containing the ballots shortly before polls closed Tuesday evening, and elections workers needed to verify the signatures and run the ballots through the voting machines. In Pinellas County, there were about 9,000 such ballots and it took most of the day Wednesday to process them.

———

Tony Winton and Suzette Laboy contributed from Miami.

———

Follow Tamara Lush at http://twitter.com/tamaralush