Floridians Wait Hours in Line to Vote
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DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – Anxious Florida voters waited up to eight hours to cast early ballots yesterday as President Bush and Senator Kerry stormed through the state making last-minute appeals in the nation’s largest battleground state.
As many as a fifth of registered Sunshine State voters will have already cast ballots by Election Day. In Palm Beach County yesterday, some disgusted voters gave up and left after waiting for hours in the hot sun and occasional downpours. In Broward County, voters waited to a cacophony of honking car horns and cheers of “Viva Bush” that competed with shouts of “F– Bush!”
Speaking in Miami yesterday, Mr. Bush aimed his message at Cuban-Americans who had turned out in record numbers four years ago in the wake of the Clinton-Gore administration’s decision to return 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba.
The president promised yesterday to “continue to press hard and ensure that the gift of freedom finally reaches the men and women of Cuba.”
“We will not rest. We will keep the pressure on until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they receive here in America. I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant,” he said.
Mr. Kerry, who rallied in Tampa last night and was scheduled to campaign in Orlando this morning, has been delivering parts of his speeches in Spanish and emphasizing the number of Floridians who have lost their jobs and health insurance under Mr. Bush.
He also appealed to Jewish voters – a major voting bloc in Florida – by emphasizing his support for the state of Israel.
Distrust is running particularly deep among voters in South Florida, where several Democratic-leaning counties were at the center of the presidential recount battle in 2000.
Republican voters have been spit at, cursed at, and intimidated, complained a spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida, Joseph Agostini.
One Republican attorney observing the voting in Palm Beach County, where many voters in 2000 were confused by the infamous “butterfly ballot,” called the polling station in Delray Beach a “war zone.” The attorney, Lawrence Gottfried, said he had been in arguments and was once threatened with physical harm.
Some Democrats saw a ploy to suppress their votes in the interminable line-ups, limited opening hours, and perceived shortage of poll workers and machines. At an early-voting station in Hollywood, where the wait to vote was four hours long on Saturday, state Rep. Eleanor Sobel complained about an insufficient number of voting machines and restricted voting hours.
“I’m thinking it was done to limit minority voting in heavily Democratic precincts,” said Ms. Sobel, who worried that Florida would once again become “the laughingstock” of the nation.
The memory of the contested 2000 election visibly energized Democratic activists here.
Warming up a crowd at a Kerry rally in Miami over the weekend, television personality Star Jones told Democrats to “beat” Republicans at the polls “like they stole something.”
When Mr. Kerry took to the stage on Friday and began telling an anecdote from his law school days, he was cut off by impatient chants of “No mas Bush!”
“I’ve been mad for four years,” said Eileen Snyder, a 62-year-old retiree from Hollywood, Fla., who has been canvassing door-to-door for Mr. Kerry.
“They stole the election four years ago and they are trying to do it again,” said Leslie Kevles, 61, who said he suspected Republicans would challenge voter registrations to slow down the voting and discourage voters.
Republican attorney Mr. Gottfried said that in his two weeks observing votes in Delray Beach he only challenged one voter, who produced a Pennsylvania driver’s license and appeared to not know his Florida address.
“We’re riled up too,” said a Bush voter, Mary Dacunha, a 57-year-old realtor from Hollywood. “They lost the last time, they just won’t admit it,” she said of Democrats, adding that she wouldn’t trust Mr. Kerry “with my cat.”
While polls show a dead heat between the candidates, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign in Florida, Matthew Miller, said he believed the “amazing” turnout of early voters, estimated at more than 1.5 million people, favors Mr. Kerry. The Kerry campaign was tracking the number of registered Democrats who have voted, he said.
New Yorker Becca McLean, a 23-year-old legal assistant who arrived in the state to help get out the vote for Mr. Kerry, said many of the people whose doors she was knocking on had already voted.
The Republican Party spokesman, Mr. Agostini, also said Republicans have been turning out in record numbers to the polls. He said the Bush campaign was optimistic and expected a smooth process with a “reinvented” election system in Florida.
Cindy Ablazey, a 43-year-old project manager from Boynton Beach, gave up on a six-hour wait at one polling place in Palm Beach County only to face a wait of up to eight hours at the next.
She said she would stay as long as it took “to have my vote counted,” although she wasn’t confident it would be, citing “the Bush family’s ability to control things.”
But Bush voter Peter Fitzpatrick, a 47-year-old pharmaceutical company executive from nearby Boynton Beach, said the voting process “is very simple.”
“They’re all looking for problems,” he said of Democrats.
Just in case they needed reminding of 2000,Karenna Gore Schiff, Vice President Gore’s daughter, swept through the state to make speeches in Tampa, Orlando, and Plantation over the weekend. She was joined by Carolyn Kennedy, Vanessa Kerry, Cate Edwards, and Chelsea Clinton, who pulled up in a column of SUVs and climbed out in short skirts and spindly high heels.
“Such class,” remarked Ida Spradlin, an event marketer from Fort Lauderdale, who pronounced the daughters “fabulous.”
The tour was the political debut of Ms. Clinton, the only daughter of President Clinton and Senator Clinton of New York, who was greeted by shouts of “Chelsea!” and surrounded by Democrats clamoring for her autograph.
Describing herself as “a little nervous” and “not accustomed to public speaking,” the 24-year-old gave a short speak extolling the achievements of her father’s two terms in the White House. She said Mr. Kerry would carry on that legacy.
“I knew I had to do it,” she said. “I wanted to be here in Florida because the stakes are so high.”
Melinda Bolinger, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Hollywood, said of Ms. Clinton, “I think she was wonderful. She looks just like her mother.”