Florida erases trauma of 2000

PRESIDENT BUSH won a convincing victory in Florida, erasing the trauma of four years ago when the outcome of the presidential election remained in limbo for 36 days while election officials scrambled to recount ballots.

This time, Bush's margin was far larger than the 537-vote edge he got in 2000 after the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the recount.

Bush and John Kerry were virtually tied in the polls for weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, and the huge turnout during 15 days of early voting gave Kerry confidence he would carry the biggest prize of the battleground states.

To win Florida's crucial 27 electoral votes, Kerry had to do well in Democratic strongholds in South Florida and hold his own in central Florida along the Interstate 4 corridor, which is rich with independent voters and considered the pivot point in statewide races.

But Bush carried that region, winning three key counties Pinellas, Hernando and Pasco that Al Gore won in 2000.

"What made the difference? Two words: Ground game," said Joseph Agostini, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party. "We had 109,000 volunteers throughout the state. In 2000, we made 77,000 personal contacts. In the last four days, we made 1.7 million." Bush also was helped by his brother Jeb, a popular two-term governor. The president got credit from voters for bringing the state federal aid after Florida was battered by four hurricanes in August and September.

As Bush cruised to victory here, there were almost none of the mammoth vote-counting problems that four years ago made Florida a national laughingstock.

Despite a heavy turnout that had voters standing in line before the polls opened and after they closed, Florida's electoral machinery worked fairly smoothly.

Some Floridians were still waiting in line to vote almost five hours after the polls were set to close. But reports of problems were minor.

One polling place opened 11 minutes late in Orange County. Ten touch-screen machines in Broward County failed when they were turned on, and voters in several counties reported that the names of some polling places did not match street addresses, sending voters searching for them.

In Daytona Beach, 13,244 early votes were lost when poll workers cut the power to a vote-counting machine, said Deannie Lowe, the Volusia County supervisor of elections. The ballots were fed into another machine for tabulation.

The ease of voting, compared with the chaos of four years ago, when thousands of confused voters in Palm Beach County voted for the wrong candidate on the now-infamous butterfly ballot, may be the result of unprecedented scrutiny given to this election.