Kerry, Bush tick off Florida
2004-11-01 10:45
Miami - The US presidential rivals on Monday wrapped up their saturation campaigning in the state that decided the 2000 election, as lawyers circled round claims of voting irregularities and residents lined up to cast ballots.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, 60, was to hold an airport rally in Orlando, Florida, early on Monday, before leaving the state for the last time before Tuesday's election.
Both Kerry and Republican President George W Bush, 58, who made his last call here on Sunday, have lavished the state with attention throughout the hard-fought presidential campaign.
Florida has once again taken the spotlight because of its likely pivotal role amid claims of illegal voting, intimidation and missing ballots.
As poll watchers poured into the southeastern state, the Republican and Democratic campaigns flooded the airwaves with advertising spots and deployed canvassers to pound the pavement and knock on doors. Polls show the race is too close to call.
Bush on Sunday wooed the Cuban-American community in Miami, a long-time Republican power base courted by the Democrats.
"We will not rest, we will keep the pressure on, until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they received here in America," Bush told a boisterous crowd of supporters.
Undecided voters
Kerry addressed a rally later in the day in Tampa, in an area considered to have the state's highest number of undecided voters.
"We need a president who can do more than one thing at the same time," Kerry said.
In addition to the presidential candidates, their running mates, wives and children, the Democrats have sent in the likes of former president Bill Clinton and rock idol Bruce Springsteen.
The Republicans have called in New York's wildly popular ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the president's own brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Many Floridians have already voted, taking advantage of early voting that started on October 18, or casting absentee ballots.
Close to 20 percent of Florida's 10 million registered voters have cast ballots, raising expectations of a massive overall turnout.
"People are passionate and Florida has been saturated with ads and candidates," said Susan McManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida.
Kerry supporters hope to capitalise on simmering discontent among Democrats over the last election, which Bush won after the US Supreme Court halted five weeks of recounts, leaving him with a 537-vote lead in Florida that secured him the presidency.
Democrats have also expressed concern over the fact that new touch-screen voting machines do not produce a printout, which would make a manual recount impossible in case of a tight election.
Republicans for their part claim thousands of ineligible voters registered in Florida.