Spectre of voting chaos looms over US election

Nearly four years ago, the US was in crisis. The country had gone to the polls, and the people had spoken, but no one knew who the next president would be.

The reason was those “hanging chads”, and a confusing voting method, caused by a cumbersome punch card system in Florida.

The results from the country’s other 49 states were intensely close – so close that it was left to the “Sunshine State” to decide between George Bush and Al Gore, and it couldn’t.

After a month of recounts and more recounts the Supreme Court handed victory to Mr Bush. He officially won by just 537 Florida ballots, in a state where six million people voted.

The debacle embarrassed Florida and left some Americans doubting whether they had sent the right man to the White House.

And it looks like it is about to happen again.

America is as divided as ever, between the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The polls suggest a very close result looms on election day.

Thousands of lawyers and observers have been mobilised by both parties to look for voting irregularities once the polls open.

A close vote in Florida – and in any of the other 17 swing states, like Ohio, could end up in court.

After 2000, many parts of Florida decided to get rid of the the punch cards which led to the famous chads – cards not punched through fully.

But they replaced them with even more controversial electronic voting machines.

The machines have already experienced problems in local elections. Some voters have complained of pressing the button to vote for one candidate only to see the name of the opponent light up.

In other cases people turned up at polling stations and accidentally managed to not vote at all.

Added to all this is the fear that the computers could be hacked into, and the votes altered.

Perhaps the biggest worry is that many of the machines do not print a paper record of the vote.

“That lack of paper has become less of a blessing and more of a curse,” said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a non-partisan information provider on election reform.

“If it comes to it, there really is not anything to recount.”

He added: “And people are concerned that the vote they put in the front of the machine won’t come out the back of the machine.”

The paper ballot controversy has already gone to court, where an application has been made against the state to ensure that print outs of all votes are kept.

But lawyers on both sides accept the case will not be resolved before November 2, when the country goes to the polls.

Some parts of Florida are keeping the punch cards, others have the electronic machines. Some polling stations may offer paper ballots as an alternative, others will not.

Meanwhile, there is a fear that many people have been wrongly removed from the voting register.

Florida officials complied a list of people barred from voting because of previous criminal convictions.

But it emerged that the list contained the names of 22,000 black people – most of whom usually vote Democrat – and just 61 Hispanics, who are generally Republican. The list was scrapped.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who now runs the Carter Centre, which monitors elections worldwide, called it a “fumbling attempt” to ban people from voting.

In a recent Washington Post article, he added: “The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely.”

Among his, and others, chief concern is that the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President’s brother and also the chairman of the Bush re-election committee.

At the same time, Florida’s Secretary of State Glenda Hood, the official in charge of running the election in the state, is the co-chair of the Bush team.

Even if Governor Bush and Secretary Hood have impeccable morals, the scope for corruption is undeniable.

“When you have got a senior state official who is also an official in a campaign – whether or not there is anything untoward going on – it creates doubt in people’s minds,” Mr Chapin said.

“Even an allegation of impropriety is not good for the process, public confidence or the system overall.”

With hawk-eyed lawyers and party election observers already in place to scrutinise the voting, any state with a close result could descend into chaos.

Mr Chapin said: “Getting through election 2004 without another controversy is really unlikely.”