WASHINGTON, Oct 29: Civil rights groups representing blacks, Hispanics and the disabled on Thursday accused Republican Party workers of trying to keep US minorities from voting.

"In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working to deny American citizens the right to vote," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

A Republican official denied the charge and voiced concern Democrats may try to steal the election on Tuesday. Citing concerns over possible vote suppression in such swing states as Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, civil rights officials said they feared a reprise of the 2000 election, in which they said thousands of minority voters were illegally disenfranchised.

The civil rights groups are all non-partisan, but historically, strong majorities of blacks and Hispanics have voted for Democratic candidates. Mr Henderson and others at a news conference outside Republican National Committee headquarters called on party Chairman Ed Gillespie to tell party workers to stop what the civil rights officials called voter intimidation and suppression.

Jim Dickson of the American Association of People with Disabilities said a survey released on Oct 19 reported that 22 per cent of the disabled said their eligibility to vote had been challenged by poll workers.

Mr Dickson said: "If they (Republicans) were not cowardly, they would meet with us and they would say to their people across the country, knock it off, this is wrong." The rights groups said they had asked both Democrats and Republicans to address their concerns about possible voter suppression, and only the Democrats had responded.

In a duelling news conference on the same spot as that of the rights groups, Republican adviser Robert Traynham accused the Democratic National Committee of deploying 10,000 trial lawyers across the United States "to cause chaos, to subvert the will of the American people, so this election will be decided by lawyers instead of the actual voters".

"We will have poll watchers in all precincts across this country ... where we believe Democrats may try to steal the election," Mr Traynham said. He also said a Democratic strategy guide advised political workers to fabricate evidence of voter fraud if none existed. -Reuters