Florida Governor Rick Scott won't extend the Tuesday, October 11 deadline for voters to register despite the impending landfall of Hurricane Matthew, rejecting a request from Hillary Clinton's campaign.
“I’m not going to extend it,” Scott told the press in Tallahassee. “Everybody has had a lot of time to register. On top of that, we have lots of opportunities to vote: early voting, absentee voting, Election Day. So I don’t intend to make any changes.”
Scott's decision looms large as Florida will once again be a key battleground state in the upcoming election. His choice could be politically motivated, as he chairs a Trump-supporting super PAC and Democrats are heavily outregistering Florida Republicans, Politico writes. State reports estimate that the Florida Democratic Party have sent in about 488,000 voter registration forms, while Republicans have sent just 60,000 into the state office.
Traditionally, late-registering Floridians have either been Democrats or not registered an affiliation but lean Democrat demographically. The Tampa Bay Times reports that nearly 50,000 voters registered in the five days before the 2012 deadline. The final margin in the 2000 Florida presidential election was 537 votes.
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