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Battleground Florida back in spotlight as ballots go missing

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, Thursday (AFP)

Four years after the "Florida fiasco", the battleground state is back in the spotlight as thousands of absentee ballots went missing and campaigners traded claims of vote rigging.

Fears of renewed electoral chaos mounted in the key battleground state this week as authorities in one of the 67 counties said they were trying to track down some 58,000 missing absentee ballots.

The Broward supervisor of elections said the ballots, about half of those requested, had been sent out but apparently not received by the voters.

Democrats, who claim President George W. Bush stole the controversial 2000 elections and who have deployed 2,700 lawyers to Florida, jumped on the scandal.

"It looks like they're trying to steal the vote again," Dianne Glasser, vice chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, told AFP. By "they", she meant Governor Jeb Bush - a brother of the US president - and other Republicans officials.

Bush supporters, on the other hand, accuse their rivals of sending in fake voter registrations. The battle is all the more bitter as Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry are in a deadlock in the southeastern state.

And both sides bemoan the fact electoral authorities appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people taking advantage of early voting that started on October 18 and is meant to ease the pressure on November 2.

In Palm Beach county, the focus of much of the five-week recount controversy in the last presidential, voters wait as long as three hours to cast their ballots.

Other than the long wait, poll workers and legal observers at a West Palm Beach voting office say they've noticed no irregularities. But like their counterparts in neighboring Broward county, they too field numerous questions about absentee ballot requested weeks ago but not yet received.

"There is a lot of anxiety about absentee ballots. There's an urgency," Sid Dinerstein, the county's Republican party leader, told AFP.

He said the long lines also are a problem - he himself planned to vote early but turned back when he realized he'd have to wait for hours.

Democrats claim Florida authorities failed to plan properly for the election and did not send enough machines or poll workers.

They largely blame the governor and Secretary of State Glenda Hood, both Republicans.

"Every single decision they make favors the Republican party," said Carol Ann Loehndorf, Democratic party chairwoman for Palm Beach county, pointing out that a low turnout would favor Republicans. Democrats have more registered voters in Florida than their rivals, but Republicans tend to have a better turnout.

Meanwhile US judges this year may once again decide the outcome of a presidential election, as lawyers for the campaigns of both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry have filed vote-related lawsuits days ahead of the November 2 balloting.

"We have already seen 35 lawsuits filed in 17 states - some before the first ballot was even cast," said Republican Party chief Marc Racicot in an e-mail message to supporters.

"So far, the Democrats have failed in their attempts to win this election in the courts, rather than the ballot box," Racicot said.

Democratic Party leaders believe the lawsuits are fully justified given what they see as the Republican strategy of suppressing turnout by intimidating likely Democratic voters - especially racial minorities, groups that largely vote Democratic.

In one example, the head of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), Anne Marie Tallman, said Tuesday her group was "seeing more directed intimidations for people with Spanish surnames and individuals who are bilingual," especially in the US southeast.

As an example, Tallman said the sheriff of Alamance County, North Carolina, gave a list of registered Hispanic voters to immigration authorities to check their status.

The sheriff "also threatened to go door-to-door personally and with his department to ensure that immigration status was checked and make sure there was no 'perpetration of fraud by Latinos,'" Tallman said.

Republicans have also filed lawsuits, including in the states of North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio.

"With election day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat," wrote Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of the liberal American Prospect magazine.

"By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own," Meyerson wrote on a Washington Post opinion page.

Many legal observers are convinced the final election results will be delayed by litigation.

"I would not be surprised if this race is not decided on November 2," said Joanne Wright, a top official at Project Vote, a non-partisan group focused on voter turnout.

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