democrats and republicans faced off in florida on whether the state should extend a looming voter registration deadline because of hurricane matthew. republican gov. rick scott stood firm against changing the deadline, set for tuesday oct. 11, despite a democratic party request to prolong the registration period due to the potential impact from the category 3 storm, which raked the state<u+2019>s east coast friday . beyond possible devastation that may accompany the storm, hurricane matthew also could cause disruptions to early voting and voter registration efforts in several atlantic states, with none more important than florida<u+2014>a perennial swing state crucial the efforts of both democrat hillary clinton and republican donald trump to win the white house. the hurricane, expected to move into georgia and the carolinas this weekend, has forced mandatory evacuations along its path. it is also expected to bring widespread power outages and infrastructure problems. the south carolina state election commission said that the state<u+2019>s october 8 registration deadline has been extended to next week in light of hurricane matthew<u+2019>s potential impact. mrs. clinton<u+2019>s campaign pointed to their early voting efforts in states such as florida, which typically peak just before the registration deadline, in asking state officials to make some accommodation. <u+201c>we actually see the biggest spikes in registration in the last two to three weeks of the registration period,<u+201d> said robby mook, mrs. clinton<u+2019>s campaign manager. <u+201c>we are literally in the midst of the highest peak of voter registration for our campaign.<u+201d> when asked at a thursday evening briefing whether he would extend voter registration deadlines because of the storm, mr. scott responded, <u+201c>i<u+2019>m not going to extend it.<u+201d> "everybody has had a lot of time to register. on top of that, we<u+2019>ve got lots of opportunities to vote<u+2014>early voting, absentee voting and election day. and so i don<u+2019>t intend to make any changes,<u+201d> mr. scott added. daniel a. smith, a political-science professor at the university of florida, said approximately 50,000 people registered to vote in the final five days of the 2012 election, according to state data. <u+201c>we know from voter registration numbers that the last week, the last five days, are very important,<u+201d> said mr. smith, who added he expects that a similar number of voters would register in the final five days of the registration period this year. of those late registrants in 2012, about 11,000 were republicans, approximately 19,000 were democrats and the rest were no-party independents or third-party voters. <u+2014>arian campo-flores contributed to this article. write to byron tau at byron.tau@wsj.com and arian campo-flores at arian.campo-flores@wsj.com
political parties face off in a stormy florida over voter deadline   - wsj
byron tau