MIAMI Four years after a turbulent post-election drama, President Bush and U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez moved ahead of their challengers in Florida on Tuesday night, following a day of lengthy voting lines but only scattered reports of problems at the polls.
With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Bush had 52 percent, while John Kerry had 47 percent. Returns were slow to come in from urban South Florida, where Kerry has strong support and turnout was heavy.
In Miami-Dade County, some voters waited to cast ballots more than four hours after polls closed at 8 p.m. Some lines began forming 90 minutes before polls opened, and a voter at the University of Miami said she spent nearly six hours in line.
“I think we’re going to see a record turnout when the final numbers are in,” Secretary of State Glenda Hood said.
Republican Martinez, a former Bush administration housing secretary, led former state education commissioner Betty Castor. Martinez and Castor were locked at 49 percent each, with Martinez leading by less than 19,000 votes.
Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns prepared for the possibility of deja vu in Florida on an Election Day long anticipated since Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by a mere 537 votes in 2000 to win the White House. The election was finally resolved 36 days later by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“There’s been a very big smelly monkey on our back for four years,” said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. “I am tired of Florida being the laughingstock of America.”
Voters also were choosing a successor to Graham, who is retiring after 18 years in the Senate and two terms as governor. The campaign was considered pivotal in determining which party controls the Senate.
But the Senate battle was overshadowed by Florida’s presidential race. Florida’s 27 electoral votes have been fiercely contested, with both campaigns spending more than $40 million on TV commercials since March.
Following an election marred by confusing butterfly ballots and hanging chads, voting took place under unprecedented scrutiny, with hundreds of attorneys, poll watchers and international observers as witnesses. Problems cropped up almost immediately, although election officials characterized the complaints as minor.
Many Florida counties switched to touch-screen voting machines after the debacle in 2000. Ten touch-screen machines failed in Broward County and nine ran out of battery power in Palm Beach County. In Collier County, touch-screen results were delayed by a procedural error, a spokeswoman for the manufacturer said.
Two Bush supporters filed a lawsuit seeking at least $15,000 in damages after claiming they were punched, pushed, shoved and spat upon by Democrats.
Officials in at least two counties said it would likely be Wednesday before all absentee ballots were counted.
Some observers said Bush might have a slight edge in Florida because his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, carries high approval ratings for his response to four hurricanes that struck the state during a span of six weeks in August and September.
But Democrats hoped that an impressive push to register new voters and memories of the 2000 debacle would tip the scales toward Kerry. Florida has about 1.5 million new registered voters since 2000.
Ralph Nader also was on the ballot again. Nader won 97,000 votes in Florida in 2000, drawing the ire of Democrats who believe the majority of those votes would have gone to Gore.
More than 1.8 million Floridians cast their ballots through early or absentee voting, nearly 2 1/2 times the number of people who voted early in 2000.
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