Florida’s early voting marred by computer problems

EARLY voting for the US presidential election began in Florida yesterday as activists urged people to opt for early ballots to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco, but computer problems and queues soon emerged.

With memories still fresh of 2000, when the race in the key battleground state was so close it triggered weeks of recounts and lawsuits, black and elderly voters in particular lined up to cast ballots two weeks before the November 2 election.

"It was embarrassing last time. Florida looked like a Third World country," said Marie Bond, adding she was voting early "because I want my vote to count."

"I don't want the same like the last election," echoed Haitian American Jean-Jacques Ardoun, as he waited in a line of several hundred that snaked from inside the Miami-Dade government centre outside. "Last time they took the votes and threw them in the garbage."

Florida decided the 2000 election for President Bush after the US Supreme Court halted the recounts, and both Mr Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, have campaigned vigorously in the state.

As the voting began, Mr Kerry was in West Palm Beach at the centre of the 2000 debacle because many voters were confused by the county's ballot design. Mr Bush, who won Florida by 537 votes in 2000, was due in Boca Raton later yesterday.

New technology, such as ATM-style touch-screen voting machines, has replaced the punch card ballots that caused so much chaos in the last election.

Nevertheless, a plethora of independent poll watching groups, the Democrats and Mr Bush's Republicans are urging voters to take advantage of early voting to avoid problems.

More than two dozen states offer "no excuse" early voting by either post or in person.

In Florida, the process was far from seamless. In Broward County, north of Miami, supervisor of elections Brenda Snipes said a computer connection went down, preventing nine ballot stations from accessing a database to find out which one of the county's 152 different ballot styles each voter should have.

In Orlando, people were kept waiting for more than two hours by a combination of long queues and computer malfunctions that prevented poll workers from verifying the names and addresses of voters. In Miami-Dade, poll workers appeared overwhelmed by the hundreds brought to the government centre by a rally of trade unions, voter activists and Democrats. The queue to cast an early ballot moved achingly slowly.

Voting rights activists and Democrats have been highly critical of the state's elections division, run by Glenda Hood, a Republican appointed by the president's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

A string of lawsuits on issues such as the lack of a paper trail for touch-screen systems are before the courts.

Democrats were anxious for people to vote early. Florida Young Democrats and College Democrats organised overnight "camp-outs" in six cities to be first in line to vote. "Early voting is our way to make sure votes are counted and counted properly," said Florida Democratic Party spokeswoman Allie Merzer.