MIAMI, United States (AFP) - Courted by the candidates, some Florida residents headed to the polls in early voting instituted after electoral chaos in the state held up the 2000 presidential election for five weeks.
Early voting got under way Monday and will continue until November 1, the eve of Election Day.
President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry have both pressed voters to take advantage of the early voting, and are focusing much of their energy on the battleground state.
"If you vote early now, we don't have to stay up late on Tuesday night on November 2, I want you to get out and get the job done," Kerry told a senior citizens at a rally in West Palm Beach Monday.
Some of the campaign minibuses lined up outside the retirement community where the rally was staged bore the words: "Early vote Express".
Voting rights groups have joined the candidates in urging people to vote early, or to cast absentee ballots, saying this would give more time to file legal challenges if the need should arise.
In downtown Miami about 100 people waited in line at lunchtime to vote at one of 17 polling stations around the city.
"This should reduce the probability that my vote is not counted," said Chris Albury.
Albury, a 45-year-old systems analyst said he'd been waiting in line for over an hour, but didn't mind a bit.
More than half the 50 US states have early voting, and Florida adopted the system after its 2000 electoral chaos.
Legal wrangling in Florida held up the last presidential election for 36 days, and left many Democrats claiming the Republicans stole the vote when the US Supreme Court ordered a halt to vote recounts, leaving Bush with a 537-vote lead over Al Gore in Florida, which gave him the presidency.
With opinion polls showing the Bush and Kerry running a close race both nationally and in Florida, the two candidates were battling hard for the southeastern state that could again play a crucial role.
"It's the largest swing state still considered in play," said Robert Jackson, a political analyst at Florida State University.
Bush blitzed Florida on Saturday and was to fly in for a campaign dinner late Monday, before a day of intense campaigning planned for Tuesday.
Kerry jetted in on Sunday to stump across the state Monday.
Party lawyers also were busy in Florida where a dozen election lawsuits already have been filed, including one that claims thousands of people were illegally kept off voter rolls because they did not completely fill out their registration forms.
Former US president Jimmy Carter has warned a repetition of what became known as "the Florida fiasco" was likely.
While analysts generally doubt it would get quite that bad, they point to a number of problems, including the fact that electronic voting machines do not print a copy of the ballots, making it impossible to manually recount the votes if the outcome is challenged.
The machines replace the punch-card system that became infamous in the last presidential elections, when thousands of votes were rejected and hundreds of Jewish people mistakenly cast ballots for a far-right wing candidate often viewed as anti-semitic.
"I think the reality is that the voting system is no better," said Roger Handberg, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "The big issue is if they have to do a recount, they will have machines with no paper trail," he said.