Updated: Florida electors officially cast votes for Obama
Florida's 27 electors formally cast the state's ballots for President-elect Barack Obama this afternoon in a hushed, dignified ceremony at the State Capitol.
"This is a very special and historically significant event," Secretary of State Kurt Browning said, asking for decorum in the Senate chamber during the proceedings. Some of the electors and their invited guests snapped pictures as souvenirs of the occasion.
"It's been a long time coming," said Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the only Democrat in a statewide-elected state office, who watched from the gallery. "This is the first time in 12 years."
Besides her party carrying the state for the first time since 1996, Sink said, "It's enormous -- the first African-American president, and as you look down at those 27 electors, you see the diversity of our state represented there."
Browning noted that the same kind of ceremony was going on in 49 other state Capitals and in the District of Columbia. He said the seven copies of the state's official ballots for Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will be distributed to proper state and federal authorities.
The electoral votes of all the states will be formally accepted at a joint congressional session, presided over by Vice President Dick Cheney, on Jan. 6. Obama and Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Earlier update
A happy group of 27 Democrats will gather in the chamber of the Florida Senate on Monday for a dignified ritual that combines a sought-after political privilege, a quaint legal anachronism and the formal selection of America's next president.
You may think that was all decided when Democrat Barack Obama made history at the polls on Nov. 4. But all voters from Maine to Hawaii were really doing was telling their slates of electors how to cast each state's ballots in the Electoral College.
Secretary of State Kurt Browning has arranged the 2 p.m. ceremony to have Obama's four-year lease on the White House literally signed, sealed and delivered. Browning said the state's "certificates of ascertainment" have already been sent to the National Archivist.
"I would consider myself a traditionalist," said Browning. "I think there've been arguments made on both sides on the Electoral College and its usefulness and its purpose. It is what it is, the Constitution requires it and so we want to make sure it's the very best meeting of the electors that we can possibly provide."
The parties designated 27 electors for Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last summer — knowing only one group would have to meet.
Eight years ago, when President Bush won Florida by a hotly disputed 537-vote margin but lost the nationwide popular vote, there were widespread calls for abolition of the electoral-vote system. But opponents said direct election would result in candidates concentrating on a few big population pockets — the Boston-Washington corridor, the Great Lakes states, California from San Francisco southward and a few states like Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania — and merely flying over the rest of the country.
Getting rid of the Electoral College wasn't an issue in the past two races, as Bush won a nationwide majority in 2004 and Obama scored big last month, racking up 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173.
Leon County Democratic Party Chairman Rick Minor, who initially supported Bill Richardson for president, said "it's an incredible honor to cast one of Florida's 27 electoral votes for Barack Obama.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'll tell my children and grandchildren some day," he said.
Browning said electors will sign seven certificates that will be sent to the state and national archives, Vice President Dick Cheney — as president of the U.S. Senate — and U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, the senior judge in the judicial circuit where the electors meet.
Browning said Cheney will preside at a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that will receive all of the states' electoral votes.
http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20081215/CAPITOLNEWS/812150323/-1/NLETTER07?source=nletter-news
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