Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the chairman of the super PAC backing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has refused to extend the Tuesday deadline for voter registration as requested by Hillary Clinton’s campaign due to Hurricane Matthew. “Everybody has had a lot of time to register,” Scott said during a storm update Thursday night in the state’s Emergency Operations Center. “On top of that, we’ve got lots of opportunities to vote: Early voting, absentee voting and Election Day. So, I don’t intend to make any changes.” The decision from the political leader of the nation’s most-important swing state – one Trump needs to win to keep his White House hopes alive — comes at a crucial time in the presidential race in Florida, where polls show Clinton is starting to nudge ahead of her GOP rival.
Meanwhile, voter-registration records show, Democrats are walloping Republicans. The Florida Democratic Party has submitted about 488,000 voter-registration forms it has collected for this election, while Republicans have submitted roughly 60,000, according to state reports.
In all, about 1.9 million voter-registration forms have been collected by nearly 700 groups statewide. Most of those groups appear Democrat-leaning or are dedicated to registering poor, young and minority voters who tend to vote for Democrats. The National Council of La Raza/Democracia USA, for instance, has registered about 49,000 people for this election — nearly all Hispanic, at least 60 percent of whom are voting for Clinton, records show.
The final days of voter registration in Florida often brings out more people who register as Democrats or who, though they register as no-party-affiliation voters, fit the profile of a Democratic voter.
Full Article: Scott won’t extend voter registration deadline as Hurricane Matthew threatens state.