201,000 Floridians Didn't Vote Because of Long Lines

Remember those ridiculously long lines on Election Day? Well, according to a new analysis about 201,000 Floridians were so frustrated they gave up and got out of line before actually casting their ballot. That's a relatively small number of the 8.4 million Floridians who did vote, but in a presidential...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

January 25, 2013

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Remember those ridiculously long lines on Election Day? Well, according to a new analysis about 201,000 Floridians were so frustrated they gave up and got out of line before actually casting their ballot. That's a relatively small number of the 8.4 million Floridians who did vote, but in a presidential election with a margin of less than 75,000, it could have made a difference. Plus, the analysis doesn't even take into account voters who may have decided not to get in line in the first place.

The analysis comes from the Orlando Sentinel with help from Ohio State University professor Theodore Allen. They looked at voters in Florida's 25 biggest counties.

Here's some more findings from the analysis:

2,000,000 voters live in a precinct that was still open 90 minutes after the official closing time.
561,000 live in a precinct that was open more than three hours afterwards.
Though, in Miami-Dade half of the precincts did end up closing about an hour after the cut-off time.
Duval and Pinellas Counties had all their precincts closed by 8:30.
Lee County actually had the worst problem with long lines in the state. 27 percent of their voters were in precincts that were open until at least 10 p.m. (Interestingly, its a heavily Republican leaning county).

Though, in the presidential race at least, those lost votes may not have made much of a difference. About 108,000 of those voters who gave up would have voted for Obama. 93,000 would have voted for Romney.

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