Despite reforms, Florida vote may face challenge

With hundreds of lawyers mobilising next month to monitor the presidential election, what are the chances of a remake of the Florida 2000 fiasco? Probably quite high, election watchers say.

The key will be how tight the November 2 race between President George W Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry is in swing states like Florida that could make a difference.

"If it’s at all close, there’s no way that the election ends on election day," Tova Wang, democracy fellow at The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank said.

"There’s going to be more lawyers and poll monitors than there are voters in these polling sites, so every little thing is going to be under the microscope to such a degree it’s a perfect impetus to argue it out."

Billions have been spent and reams of new laws drawn up to ensure there is no repeat of 2000, when the battle for Florida was so close it triggered an avalanche of ballot recounts and lawsuits that delayed the election results for more than a month.

More than 45 million Americans — a third of registered voters — will vote on ATM-style touch-screen machines which replaced the punch cards that made Florida famous for "hanging chads" and "dimpled chads," each reflecting the extent to which voters had punched decent holes in their ballots.

For the first time, a large number of foreign observers will monitor a US presidential vote.

"Florida 2000 shocked the world as much as it shocked the US," said Indian political editor Neerja Chowdhury, one of several monitors put together by leftist human rights organisation Global Exchange. Another group of observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been invited by the US State Department.

Few places are being scrutinised as closely as Florida, which Bush carried by just 537 votes in 2000 after the US Supreme Court halted the recounts and handed him the White House. And the state run by his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, is already under fire.

Even though Florida conducted a largely trouble-free primary election in August, a series of problems in an atmosphere of suspicion and lingering Democratic rancor have fuelled accusations of bias.

A statewide list of felons denied voting rights had to be abandoned when it was found to be weighted against African Americans, who predominantly vote Democratic.

State officials also fought to include Reform Party candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot. Analysts say most of Nader’s 98,000 votes in Florida in 2000, when he ran on the Green Party ticket, would have gone to then Democratic Vice President Al Gore.

In addition, prosecutors are probing claims that police harassed elderly African American voters in Orlando.

Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Centre monitors ballots around the world, declared in a stinging attack on the state this week that the 2004 vote in Florida would be as flawed as the last one.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood on Wednesday dismissed Carter’s comments as "recklessly partisan."

But the biggest turmoil surrounds the state’s decision not to make the touch-screen machines that will be used in 15 of the most populous of Florida’s 67 counties produce an auditable paper trail to ensure votes are being accurately recorded.

Without a way to check, critics fear computer-based voting systems could be vulnerable to hackers or manipulation.

"It’s absolutely asinine that we can’t get a paper trail. It doesn’t even pass the smell test," said Fred Turner, a Democrat spokesman.

The OSCE has already predicted trouble in the US vote due to the voting machines, voter eligibility rules and allegations of intimidation of minority voters.

Hood’s spokeswoman Jenny Nash said the state had complete confidence in the voting systems, and added that hundreds of local elections since 2002 had gone smoothly.

However, new technology always poses a challenge to existing laws, said Charles Ehrhardt, Mason Ladd Professor of Law at Florida State University. Invariably, the legal system will seek clarity by setting precedents through the courts. (REUTERS)

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