Florida | featured news

President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

Mitt Romney’s top campaign official in Florida conceded Thursday that President Obama will win the state, acknowledging a vote count that was moving inexorably against the Republicans.

Sporadic problems were reported Tuesday at polling places around the country, including a confrontation in Pennsylvania involving Republican inspectors over access to some polls and a last-minute court fight in Ohio over election software. One Florida elections office mistakenly told voters in robocalls the election was on Wednesday....

President Obama sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states, including Iowa and Wisconsin, while Mitt Romney fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia.

People in Florida, Virginia and Indiana have gotten calls falsely telling them they can vote early by phone and don't need to go to a polling place. In suburban Broward County, Fla., a handful of elderly voters who requested absentee ballots say they were visited by unknown people claiming to be authorized to collecttheballots.

A Florida judge is denying prosecutors' request for a gag order in the trial of a neighborhood watch leader charged with fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The campaigns are ready for Election Day -- so are their legal teams. President Obama and Mitt Romney both have battalions of lawyers ready to litigate any voting disputes that could affect this year's election. Legal strike forces are now a campaign standard, thanks largely to the disputed 2000 recount in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Two off-duty Florida law-enforcement officers fatally shot an armed, naked woman who confronted them at a social gathering Saturday, authorities said. The shooting occurred at about 1:15 p.m. Saturday in Hernando County, north of Tampa. The county sheriff's office said in a news release that the men were approached by an "armed, naked and irrational female." The news release does not identify the weapon, but it says "one or both of the law enforcement officers fired their weapons, striking the female." She died at the scene.

Unemployment rates fell or held steady last month in nine key swing states at the center of this year's presidential election. Rates dropped in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina. They were unchanged in New Hampshire and Virginia.

For LaVon Bracy, the pain of racial discrimination, of fighting for her rights as a U.S. citizen, still aches every time she thinks about Florida's new voter identification law. "When I think I had ancestors that died for this right. I owe it to them ... to do what I'm doing," said Bracy, who years ago helped desegregate her Florida high school and today is fighting to change voting restrictions she feels are designed to keep people like her away from the polls.