In Florida, partisan clashes mark election countdown

MIAMI -- Partisan passions are running high four days before Election Day in battleground states around the country, but nowhere so intensely as in Florida, epicenter of the recount battles of the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Supporters of President Bush and Senator John F. Kerry from around the country have descended upon the state in droves, fueling already smoldering local emotions amid fiery political rallies, shouting matches between rival sign-wavers, and mutually suspicious pamphleteering at packed early voting precincts.

At Miami City Hall yesterday, 24-year-old Jesse Carton of Brookline waved a Kerry sign near hundreds of voters who waited in line for two hours, seeking refuge from the afternoon sun in the shadow of palm trees and sea breezes blowing across a nearby marina. Carton said he and his girlfriend drove to Florida two weeks ago to pitch in and help Kerry.

Democratic poll watchers with Carton muttered amongst themselves that some of their Republican counterparts were said to be intimidating Kerry supporters, staring at them and refusing to move away if they declined to accept a Bush-Cheney sticker. Republican poll workers declined to comment.

"Florida's the biggest swing state and it was pretty contested last time, and we heard a lot about voter intimidation here, so if I could I wanted to help make sure everyone's vote counted," Carton said. "This election has galvanized me more than any other political event has. It kind of feels like it could be a political statement for our generation."

Meanwhile, Florida Republican Party spokesman Joseph Agostini, who is based in Broward County for the final days of the election, charged yesterday that elderly voters standing in line at early polling places who refuse to accept Kerry stickers have been harassed with shouts of "Hey, we've got a Bush voter here!"

"A lot of our poll watchers and our volunteers have been pretty much continually harassed and intimidated," Agostini said. "It's to be expected because quite frankly we are in a very strong Democratic county."

Such fervor was on full display at an ad hoc rally in downtown Fort Lauderdale late Thursday night, after "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker Michael Moore derided the nearby Broward County elections office, where workers were scrambling to send out replacement absentee ballots to thousands of voters who never received their original ballots.

Moore denounced the irregularities, saying, "The whole world is watching." (In response, a state Republican Party spokeswoman noted that Democrats run the Broward County government and suggested Moore "direct his criticism inward.")

At the end of the rally, several Republican hecklers holding signs for Bush and GOP senatorial candidate Mel Martinez showed up and started chanting "Four more years!" Democrats holding Kerry signs surrounded them, yelling "No more Bush!" For several minutes, the rival camps screamed at each other, noses nearly touching.

Police officers swarmed the area to maintain order. Finally, the Bush supporters turned and marched away with signs held high amid the protection of a police escort, as the vastly larger number of Kerry supporters cheered in triumph in having shouted them down.

Meanwhile, in Broward yesterday afternoon, Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, a Democrat, said reports that 58,000 absentee ballots had been lost were "absolutely not true." That number, she said, referred to the total number in the first mailing, from which only some were lost.

The county was mailing out 9,000 new and replacement absentee ballots yesterday and sending another 3,000 by FedEx to voters outside the county, she said. Broward officials were also starting to open and process some 78,000 absentee ballots that have been returned.

Also yesterday, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican, sent county election supervisors a letter saying that any voter who is challenged must be moved to the side to be processed for a provisional ballot.

Democrats have accused Republicans of planning to challenge many voters in heavily Democratic precincts in the Sunshine State in order to create long lines and discourage voting, while Republicans have accused Democrats of registering nonexistent new voters. Kerry supporters seized on Hood's letter as support for their claims.

"That to us is a great sign that the secretary of state's office has read, as we have, reports that Republicans are planning to challenge thousands of voters at the polls, and they're concerned as well," said Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Kerry campaign.

But Dario Moreno, a professor of politics at Florida International University, called the competing accusations "games" by both parties. He predicted that Republicans would not be overly aggressive in challenging voters "because that would play into the argument that they are trying to suppress the black vote" while yielding little help to their cause.

Similar fights echoed in the battleground state of Ohio, the scene of partisan wrangling over 35,000 new registrations the state GOP says are fraudulent and preemptive sparring over rumored Republican plans to challenge voters' identities.

Democrats had argued the attempts to invalidate the registrations and challenge voters' identities targeted poor and minority voters, who are more likely to support Kerry. Republicans say the efforts are necessary to prevent fraud from canceling out legitimate votes.

Yesterday, a federal judge in Cincinnati extended a temporary ruling that had halted hearings on the validity of those registrations in six counties, dealing a blow to Republicans. Hours later, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, issued a statement urging the courts to keep all monitors from both parties away from the polls, and to leave the challenges until after Election Day.

The request by Blackwell, accused for months by Democrats of using his office to help the fortunes of his party in the Buckeye State, caught both sides by surprise and set up an internecine conflict: Attorney General Jim Petro, who is also a Republican, said late yesterday that he would not comply with Blackwell's request.

Meanwhile, Nevada, where polls show an unexpectedly close contest, has also seen accusations of fraud and voter suppression.

But voting in the Silver State has been proceeding calmly. At the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas, voters lined up in an orderly manner, joking with one another.

Globe staff writers Yvonne Abraham in Ohio and Susan Milligan in Nevada contributed to this report.