Obama invokes Florida recount to encourage voting

President Obama expects the election will be so close that he's invoking the Florida recount to urge Democrats to go to the polls.

In an ad airing in swing states, Obama goes back to the drama of 2000 when inspectors looked at hanging chads to determine whether Florida voters intended to back Al Gore or George W. Bush. The narrator talks about the 537 votes that separated Gore from Bush when the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount and effectively declared Bush the winner.

"Five hundred and thirty-seven. The number of votes that changed the course of American history. The difference between what was and what could have been," says the ad narrator, before urging viewers to "make your voice heard."

New Hampshire residents began seeing the ad this week. Florida voters will also see the commercial, as well as those in Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to the Los Angeles Times.