29 October 2004	Friday	14 Ramazan 1425

MIAMI, Oct 28: Electoral authorities in Florida say they will resend tens of thousands of absentee ballots on Friday, after failing to determine the fate of 58,000 ballots that were sent out but not received by voters.

With only days to go until the presidential election, the incident has raised concerns of a repeat of the 2000 chaos in the southeastern state that delayed the outcome of the presidential vote by five weeks.

Broward County's supervisor of elections said the replacements would be shipped out on Friday. Authorities in the county, Florida's most populous, had sent out 127,320 absentee ballots, many of them weeks ago, but as many as 58,000 voters never received them. More than 50,800 people received their ballots and voted. She said a new ballot was sent out to anyone who had requested one and had not yet voted.

"This isn't a blame game. What we're concentrating on is getting the ballots to the voter," she said.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement launched an investigation Tuesday but found no evidence of criminal intent.-Reuters