03 November 2004	Wednesday	19 Ramazan 1425

WEST PALM BEACH, Nov 2: A number of claims of irregularities surfaced on Tuesday as voters in trouble-prone Florida cast ballots under the watchful eyes of thousands of observers.

The problems once again raised the specter of the 2000 debacle, when legal wrangling and vote recounts in Florida held up the outcome of the presidential for 36 days.

Several voters, many of them in traditionally Democratic-voting black neighborhoods, complained that they received phone calls sending them to wrong precincts, or even telling them they were not registered to vote.

"Voters are lighting up our phone lines in response to these calls," said Theresa LePore, the head electoral official in Palm Beach county.

"It's terrible," she told journalists outside a synagogue in a West Palm Beach retirement community where voters were casting their ballots.

Palm Beach was the focus of much of the controversy in the last presidential vote, when confusing ballots caused elderly Jewish supporters of Democrat Al Gore to mistakenly vote for far-right longshot Pat Buchanan, whose views are considered anti-semitic.

Bush's 537-vote lead over Gore in Florida won him the presidency in 2000 after the US Supreme Court halted five weeks of recounts in the southeastern state.

Asked how long it would take to find out who won this time around, LePore said: "That's up to the lawyers."

Retiree Sheryl Miller, who is in her seventies, sighed as she recalled the 2000 chaos. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I don't think we'll be getting the results tonight," she said.

Her friend Esther Kinterman said the new electronic machines that replaced the infamous punch-card system were reasonably easy to use. "But I don't like that they don't leave a paper trail," she said. The machines used in 15 of Florida's 67 counties do not print out ballots, leading critics to say a reliable manual recount would be impossible.

Another key concern in Florida was that thousands of voters who requested absentee ballots may not have received them in time.

Thousands of Democratic, Republican and non-partisan lawyers were monitoring the vote across the state, fielding questions from voters and noting down any complaints and claims of irregularities.

Riviera Beach poll monitors were out in force to prevent a repetition of the 2000 problems, when a disproportionately high number of votes were rejected in the predominantly black city just outside West Palm Beach.

Officials expected a huge turnout, but the wait was generally shorter than it had been during early voting in the two weeks ahead of election day, when people waited in line for up to five hours.

Democrats believe a strong turnout, particularly in black and Hispanic communities, would help Kerry, and some civic rights groups accused the Republicans of trying to suppress voting among those minorities.

Republican chief strategist Karl Rove said Democrats may be ahead in some south Florida counties, but that Bush was leading in many other areas.-AFP