Florida Registration Obstacles

The state’s swinging toward Obama. Facing South points to some problems:

Polls show that out of the three big Southern swing states — Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — Florida is the one that has most decisively turned in Obama’s favor in the last three weeks. The state’s 27 Electoral College votes also make it an especially coveted prize.

But chronic problems with Florida’s election system add risk to this strategy for the Obama camp. As of earlier this week, some 5,000 newly-registered voters had their registrations thrown out due to the state’s controversial “no-match” rule.

The state’s massive disenfranchisement of ex-felons — a key factor in Gore’s loss in 2000 — was eased with new rules by Gov. Crist that allowed 112,000 ex-felons to vote, but as of late September only 9,000 ex-felons had registered because the changes were poorly publicized.

And then there are the ongoing snafus like the 3,500 missing ballots in Palm Beach County last month which reversed a judicial election and led citizens to call for the removal of the county elections supervisor.

RELATED: Feds question new voter checks in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio.