Election low priority in storm-ravaged Florida

All eyes will be on Florida next month when America goes to the polls.

State officials are desperate to avoid the scenes of 2000, when a disputed result led to a chaotic month of recounts, eventually ending up in the Supreme Court.

But for many people in this state, the election is the last thing on their minds.

Millions are still recovering from the most catastrophic hurricane season in living memory.

Four massive storms battered Florida in the past few weeks.

Some polling stations have been destroyed. In fact some entire electoral districts have been levelled or flooded by hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.

Nowhere has the impact of the storms been felt more heavily than in the coastal community of Punta Gorda, in the south west of the state.

Charley killed several people, flattened entire mobile home parks and caused widespread flooding.

Locals have been told it will take up to a year to repair their homes – if they have not been condemned.

“Who cares about the election?” said Lynda Zybas, a 50-year-old flight attendant out for her morning power walk along the town’s harbour.

“We are still trying to get our lives back to normal. People have all their usual worries, and now the hurricanes. Voting is the last thing on my mind.”

Ms Zybas is on edge. Weeks of repeated hurricanes have taken their toll. As she talks she keeps speed walking, along a pavement scarred by debris and flood damage.

The morning air is humid and thick with the stagnant smell of evaporating flood water.

“Punta Gorda is in a mess. Every night for the next year I will go to bed with no ceiling in my bedroom,” said Ms Zybas, who usually votes Republican.

“The hurricanes have changed my way of looking at life.

“I have my priorities. Why should I waste my time on the election?”

Harry Langlois, 70, from nearby Port Charlotte is also taking his morning exercise on the waterfront.

“The whole atmosphere has changed here. A lot of people have come back after the evacuation but some don’t even have homes to go to,” he said.

“If you’ve had to move away, who has time for an absentee ballot?”

All around Punta Gorda, roofs are covered with bright blue tarpaulins. Very few homes escaped unscathed.

Nearly all have piles of timber, flood-damaged furniture and pieces of splintered palm tree sitting at the end of their driveways.

President George Bush visited Punta Gorda in August, just days after Hurricane Charley roared ashore. He would make the trip to Florida three more times after each of the other storms.

The visits were made with one eye on the polls. Florida is a crucial swing state in the election, and in 2000 it would have decided the outcome of the election were it not for the re-count debacle.

One of the residents who met the president in Punta Gorda was John Knolle, a retired firefighter.

“He shook my hand and said ’I’m out to help you guys’,” Mr Knolle explained.

“I think he would have gone to any state where there had been a catastrophe like this. But then, this is an election year,” he said.

Mr Bush quickly announced a federal aid package for many of those who had been devastated by the hurricanes.

But financial relief will not buy Mr Knolle’s vote.

“I normally vote Republican. This year I am undecided,” he said as he cleared fallen tree branches from the front of his home, his arms bleeding from scratches.

With most of the country polarised, undecided voters like Mr Knolles will determine the outcome of the election.

“I stayed here for the hurricane in a friend’s shelter,” he said. “Myself and my wife drove around afterwards, looking at all the damage, and we just cried.”

But he said: “I’m definitely still interested in the election. We can’t let the hurricanes interfere with our rights as citizens, otherwise, we lose our way of life.”