Florida's Votes Unclaimed, but Less Depends on Them Brian Blanco for The New York Times Marty Gueli, a systems administrator, reconciled ballot printouts in Sarasota, Fla., on Wednesday. MIAMI - Another presidential election has come and gone. Only not in Florida, where through much of Wednesday the swing state's 29 electoral votes remained an unclaimed, though largely inconsequential, prize. One day after President Obama was re-elected, Florida, where he held a slim lead, was still too close to call - stuck in postelection mode once again as several counties tallied absentee ballots. Luckily, unlike the 2000 presidential contest, when the country's attention hung on hanging chads, this year's election made Florida's choice an afterthought. "After this election, Florida is worse than a laughingstock," Billy Corben, a Miami documentary filmmaker and avid election night Twitter user, said with a smile. We're now an irrelevant laughingstock. The denouement, though, was fitting in an election season that lurched from flash fire to flash fire, beginning with a 2011 move by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to reduce the number of early voting days and place 11 complex proposed amendments on the ballot. To complicate matters further, several counties in Florida agreed early this week to allow voters to request and complete absentee ballots in person at an elections office after a lawsuit by Democrats was filed in federal court asking for more early voting days. With the two candidates running neck and neck in this swing state, masses of voters turned out to cast their ballots. All of which led to time-crushing lines on Election Day, despite attempts to get people to vote absentee. "Voters were determined to have their voices heard in this state," said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political science professor. On Tuesday, lines stretched and swirled around the more urban parts of the state, particularly in pockets of Miami-Dade County, where people waited as long as six hours. Even after President Obama was declared the victor, a few voters stayed put so they could vote. The torturous waits prompted Carlos A. Giménez, the county's mayor, to apologize to voters. Were there problems in certain precincts? Mr. Giménez said. Without a doubt, and so we're going to do an after-action report on every single precinct, what went right, what went wrong. Not everyone wanted to vote on Tuesday. Some had tried to cast ballots last week, during early voting, but fled after seeing lines that sometimes wrapped around buildings. Waits of three to five hours were not uncommon in Miami. Reports of broken ballot printers and scanners around the state added to the problem. The slow pace of the lines, and Wednesday's continuing count of absentee votes, was worsened by the exceptionally long ballots, the longest in Florida history, which were weighed down by 11 proposed constitutional amendments. After the widespread balloting problems in 2000, Florida lawmakers made a commitment to fixing the election process. They set aside partisan differences and put changes in effect that were widely praised, analysts said. But last year, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, and the Florida Legislature pushed through a broad overhaul of election laws to curb fraud. Viewed by Democrats as a mostly partisan maneuver to hamper Democratic turnout, the changes spurred a series of lawsuits that chipped away at the law. The law's chief legacy was the reduction in early voting days, from 14 to 8, including the final Sunday before Election Day, which is when a disproportionate number of black Floridians cast ballots. With fewer early voting days, analysts say, the lines on Election Day bulged in some places, particularly in more Democratic precincts. Once the election is put to rest here, a flurry of post-mortems is sure to follow. Mr. Scott said on Wednesday that he would consider whether changes were warranted. "The challenge for state officials is to make sure voters don't experience this frustration next time," Ms. McManus said. There will be a lot of pressure on the Legislature to go back to a bipartisan election process.