FORT LAUDERDALE, United States (AFP) - The disappearance of tens of thousands of ballots has raised new questions about Florida's ability to avert a repeat of the 2000 debacle, and fueled protests in the battleground state.
With just days to go to the November 2 election, Broward County authorities said they were mailing substitutes for the absentee ballots they claim were sent out but that voters apparently never received.
Supporters of Democratic candidate John Kerry pounced on the embarrassing incident that came on the heels of a string of lawsuits, claims of irregularities and complaints about long early voting lines.
Filmmaker Michael Moore, of blockbuster "Fahrenheit 9/11"-fame, joined protesters outside the Broward supervisor of elections' office in Fort Lauderdale, 65 kilometers (40 miles) 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 President George W. 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."
Moore has been touring the country to mobilize Democratic voters.
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 George W. Bush with a 537-vote lead that won him the state and the White House.
The issue of the missing ballots is all the more crucial as Bush and Kerry are in a deadlock in the southeastern state that could once again be pivotal.
Broward County's top election official Brenda Snipes said her office had sent out 127,320 absentee ballots earlier this month, and that at least 50,800 people received them and voted. The others will now receive new ballots, she said.
Snipes is a Democrat, but critics largely blame the Republican state government, led by the president's brother Jeb Bush, for failing to fix the problems that led to the so-called "Florida fiasco" four years ago.
They claim that touch-screen machines that 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 opened 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, will have done so by election day.
This led analysts to predict a record turnout.
"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.
10/29/2004 - 05:41 GMT - AFP