Early Florida voting hits some bumps
Oct. 18: NBC's Kerry Sanders reports from Miami, as Florida opened early voting Monday for the Nov. 2 election.
Nightly News
MIAMI - Early voting for the presidential election began in Florida on Monday as activists urged people to opt for early ballots to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco, but computer problems and long lines soon emerged.
With memories still fresh of 2000, when the race in the key battleground state was so close it triggered weeks of recounts and lawsuits, black and elderly voters in particular lined up to cast ballots two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
“It was embarrassing last time. Florida looked like a third world country,” said Marie Bond, adding she was voting early "because I want my vote to count.”
“I don’t want the same like the last election,” echoed Haitian American Jean-Jacques Ardoun as he waited in a line of several hundred that snaked from inside the Miami-Dade government center outside. “Last time they took the votes and threw them in the garbage.”
Key battleground
Florida decided the 2000 election for President Bush after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recounts, and both Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, have campaigned vigorously in the state.
As the voting began Kerry was in West Palm Beach — at the center of the 2000 debacle because many voters were confused by the county’s ballot design. Bush, who won Florida by 537 votes in 2000, was due in Boca Raton later Monday.
New technology, such as ATM-style touch-screen voting machines, has replaced the punch card ballots that caused so much chaos in the last election.
Nevertheless, a plethora of independent poll watching groups, the Democrats and Bush’s Republicans are urging voters to take advantage of early voting to avoid problems.
More than two dozen states offer “no excuse” early voting by either mail or in person, meaning voters do not have to give a reason. Some states, such as Nevada, Iowa and West Virginia, have already begun. Texas, Arkansas and Colorado also started Monday.
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