Too close to call troubled Florida primary

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Sept. 11 (UPI) -- An attorney who has never held political office had a narrow lead over former Attorney General Janet Reno for the Democratic nomination for Florida's governor on Wednesday, but voting problems made a legal challenge of the results likely.

With 97 percent of the state's precincts reporting, Tampa lawyer Bill McBride held a 45 percent to 43 percent lead over Reno, with a narrowing margin of about 19,000 votes. At midnight, McBride had a 92,000-vote lead. State Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami had about 12 percent of the vote total.

Votes were still being counted in south Florida, where dozens of polling places opened late, and poll workers failed to show up. Thousands of people were forced to use paper ballots because of difficulties with a new electronic voting system put in place because of problems in the November 2000 general election, but some precincts had no paper ballots available as backup.

Because of voting problems reported in at least 14 of Florida's 67 counties, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered the polls to stay open statewide for two more hours on Tuesday evening. But poll workers in Broward County closed the polls at 7 p.m., saying they were never formally notified that they should remain open.

Almost one-fourth of Florida's 3.9 million registered Democrats live in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, where most of the problems were reported.

Broward County officials said Wednesday morning they lacked results from six precincts. There were also problems reading electronic cartridges used to record votes on touch screen machines. Counting of paper ballots was not expected to begin until Wednesday afternoon.

Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith said he was considering recommending that that Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant be removed from office because "whatever could go wrong did go wrong."

"I am very disappointed that our two largest counties had so much difficulty. I frankly wonder what they've been doing for two years," Smith said.

In Miami-Dade County, votes from more than two dozen precincts had not been counted because voting machines were not shut down properly, said Assistant Supervisor of Elections Gisela Salas. Some voters complained that their touch screens shut down while they were voting.

Elections officials in Palm Beach, Union, Duval, Orange and Collier counties were planning additional counts or recounts.

McBride, 57, is the former managing partner of Holland & Knight, the largest law firm in Florida. Polls in April showed him almost 30 percentage points behind Reno, but the state teachers union and the Democratic Party helped McBride raise $4.2 million to Reno's $2.6 million.

Reno launched a "Red Truck Tour" of Florida in February, in a grass-roots campaign that concentrated on black neighborhoods and retirement communities.