MIAMI, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- Democratic and Republican lawyers will descend on voting locations in Florida and other swing states Nov. 2, crowding the polling places and looking for violations by the opposition party.
Some problems have popped up during early voting in Florida, one of five states that set up polling places before the election to make it more convenient to vote.
There are some questions about whether the lawyers are the cause or the solution of the problems leading up to the Nov. 2 election that pits President Bush, a Republican seeking re-election, against Democratic challenger John Kerry.
Elections supervisor Bill Cowles of Orlando, president of the Florida Association of Elections Supervisors, asked Gov. Jeb Bush for help in Orange County, his home county.
In a letter sent Friday, Cowles said his office has been "bombarded with phone correspondence from the voters because of the harassment they're enduring" at polling locations, which are mostly government buildings, including libraries.
The governor replied Sunday that supervisors should direct "observers, solicitors and press into appropriate special locations where they may exercise their rights without interfering with the rights of electors."
He also said supervisors could remove people from polling places if it becomes necessary.
"I will ask the secretary of state to distribute to all supervisors of elections appropriate materials that advise supervisors and others of their rights and to share with supervisors best practices being use to preserve voter rights through the state," Bush said.
Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, said she wouldn't hesitate to shut down a polling place that has been harassed by campaign members and some voters.
She said several workers have quit their posts because of the harassment.
"If the poll workers walk out, I will close it and not restaff," she told the Palm Beach Post. "They're just ugly to staff, ugly to voters and everybody else. It's absolutely disgusting."
Both Republicans and Democrats have charged each other with voter harassment.
Cowles said in his letter, "The solicitors and observers from the various campaigns are creating havoc with not only the voters, but with our employees as well.
"The media has become a problem in that they insist on being in the room where the voters are making their ballots. The voters are becoming so incensed that we received reports on the first day of early voting of voters threatening bodily harm against a reporter and his cameraman," Cowles said.
"When we explained to an upset voter that the early voting sites did not enjoy the same protections as an election-day polling place, he responded, 'Today is my election day,'" Cowles said.
Because early voting takes place in public buildings such as libraries, officials decided to waive restrictions on campaigning within a certain distance of the polling place.
Both political parties have recruited legal volunteers in Florida and elsewhere to monitor voting where the presidential race is expected to be close.
The teams of lawyers will also try to head off any projected problems and keep track of what's going on in early-voting states.
Both parties are training poll watchers on how to spot malfunctioning voting machines or improper behavior by poll clerks.
They will also determine whether polls open and close on time and how voter lists are handled.
Each party can have a poll watcher inside the polling place, and they will also have observers outside.
Partisan politics has already become a factor.
Broward County Republicans in Fort Lauderdale spoke of union members intimidating an elderly female voter who was a Republican. She said she never voted.
Democrats said the lawyers are not approaching anybody or intimidating them. They said they have lawyers in every county, and so do the Republicans.
The reasons for all the tension were the polls that called for an extremely close election and the 2000 election that was won by President Bush by 537 votes. The end to the five-week dispute was finally called by the Supreme Court.
The dispute four years ago led to the installation of new touch-screen voting machines.
U.S. District Judge Roy Cohn rejected a suit Monday seeking to create a paper trail for touch-screen voting machines in Florida.
The suit was filed by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla. It was too late for it to go into practice for the presidential election Nov. 2, but could have been implemented for later elections, reported WFOR-TV in Miami.
Wexler had also sought to place federal monitors in polling places this year.
Wexler said he challenged the use of touch-screen voting machines because the ballots cannot be recounted after a close election.
Fifteen Florida counties have the electronic devices, and 52 others use paper with optical scanners. Wexler said that violates the equal-protection rights of voters.
State and county elections officials argued that touch screens satisfy the state's manual recount law.
Cohn's decision came after a three-day trial last week in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
--
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
