MIAMI, Oct 29: Florida was again in the eye of the electoral storm Friday amid claims of illegal voting, intimidation and other irregularities reminiscent of the five-week chaos that marked the 2000 presidential election.

Republican party advisor Mindy Tucker Fletcher said 925 convicted felons, who are not allowed to vote under Florida law, have either done so or requested absentee ballots.

"This is evidence of the law being broken," she said. But Democrats claim the names were culled from a list of 48,000 alleged felons which Republican State Governor Jeb Bush - a brother of the president - was forced to scrap after it was found to be flawed and to include a number of people whose voting rights had been restored.

"This is one more step to disenfranchise voters by the Republican Party of Florida," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the state's Democratic Party. The latest partisan war of words came on the heels of the embarrassing disappearance of tens of thousands of ballots that fueled angry protests.

Broward County authorities said they were mailing substitutes for the absentee ballots they claim were sent out but that voters apparently never received. Filmmaker Michael Moore, of blockbuster "Fahrenheit 9/11"-fame, joined protesters outside Broward electoral offices in Fort Lauderdale, 65 kilometers north of Miami.

"There are 60,000 ballots missing; we'll do what we can to find out who's responsible," said Moore, an outspoken critic of Mr Bush. Moore urged those who had not received the absentee ballots they requested to take advantage of ongoing early voting. "Every single vote counts," the controversial director said, to which the crowd responded: "No more Bush."

Florida had already taken center stage four years ago when legal wrangling delayed the outcome of the vote for 36 days until the US Supreme Court halted recounts, leaving Mr Bush with a 537-vote lead that won him the state and the White House.

Democrats blamed Florida's Republican state government, led by the president's brother, for failing to fix the problems that led to the so-called "Florida fiasco" four years ago.

They claim that new touch-screen machines, which replace the punch-card system that was behind much of the 2000 chaos, could cause renewed problems because they do not print out ballots, making it impossible to conduct a manual recount.

The issue was taken to court, but a judge dismissed the case this week, saying that while a paper trail would be preferable, he had no authority to order electoral offices to use printers.

Both campaigns had urged anyone who felt uncomfortable with the touch-screen machines to ask for absentee ballots. But Republicans are now concerned that sending out duplicate absentee ballots will open the door to more fraud following what they say were thousands of invalid voter registrations sent in by Kerry supporters.

Eligible citizens also have the option of casting their ballots in early voting that started on October 18. The Orlando Sentinel said that more than 1.4 million people already had voted, and calculated that two million people, or 20 percent of the registered voters in the state, will have done so by election day.

This led analysts to predict the record turnout Democrats have been banking on. "It's going right down to the wire again in Florida. In this kind of race, with so few voters left undecided, it comes down to three things: turnout, turnout and turnout," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. -AFP