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Kerry, Edwards: Get vote in now

The Democratic candidates appeal to supporters in North and South Florida. Kerry will stop in Tampa today.

PEMBROKE PINES - Forget the talk of a 15-day countdown to election day.

On the eve of the start of early voting in Florida, John Kerry and John Edwards blitzed the state Sunday to urge people to start casting their votes now.

"You have got to start voting tomorrow, and you've got to get your friends to start voting tomorrow," Kerry told a roaring crowd of roughly 7,000 in Broward County on Sunday afternoon.

In Tallahassee just after nightfall, Kerry's running mate John Edwards met more than 9,000 enthusiastic supporters on the Florida A&M University campus.

"They understand the more people who vote the more likely John Kerry is going to be president," said Edwards, a North Carolina senator. "So I want to know first of all, when can you start voting here in Florida?"

"Tomorrow!" screamed the crowd.

Kerry and Edwards are in the midst of a 12-city Florida tour that brings the Massachusetts senator to Tampa this afternoon for a speech. Democrats see early voting as an opportunity to compensate for the traditional advantage Florida Republicans have had with absentee voting, and they're trying to motivate early Kerry voters with reminders of the election fiasco of 2000 and potential problems this year.

Just a mile away from Edwards' rally in the shadow of the state Capitol, dozens of college students from FAMU and Florida State University camped overnight Sunday to be first in line at the Leon County Supervisor of Elections Office to vote this morning. It was one of five such campouts the state Democratic party organized.

In Pembroke Pines, as Kerry nodded beside him on stage, Sen. Bill Nelson noted a published report that Gov. Jeb Bush had ruled out plans to scrap a faulty list of suspected felons who would be removed from the voting list even though the governor had been advised of the problems. The governor denies he was told there were problems with the list, which ultimately was not used.

"What they're trying to do is obvious. What we can do is obvious. Are you going to vote starting tomorrow?" Nelson asked, drawing a roaring "Yes!" from the crowd.

Also joining Kerry in South Florida were members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have been traveling across the state to urge voters to cast ballots before Nov. 2, and retiring Sen. Bob Graham and his wife, Adele.

Implying that Graham would have a place in a Kerry administration, Kerry noted that Graham "before anybody else" had warned that invading Iraq would be a diversion from fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

"I've got news for you folks. He may be retiring from the United States Senate," Kerry said of Graham, "but if you help me become president, I'm not going to let him retire from service to this country."

Meanwhile, Kerry's Florida swing was preceded by a Republican mailing which touts President Bush's environmental record and wrongly implies that Kerry might support oil drilling off Florida's coast.

"I support drilling in the right places," the mailer quotes Kerry saying in a University of Florida Independent Alligator article - later corrected - that had suggested Kerry backed drilling. Kerry has consistently opposing drilling or even studying drilling near Florida.

In 2001, the president backed an effort, opposed by Gov. Jeb Bush, to sell oil and gas leases near Florida's coast. Even when the administration shrank the Gulf area under consideration, Kerry opposed it.

On Sunday, Kerry seized on a Sunday New York Times Magazine report that the president had told donors he planned in January to "come out strong" to privatize Social Security. Kerry bashed the idea and repeated his pledge not to cut benefits, raise the retirement age or privatize Social Security.

The Bush campaign denied the report.

"The president has never talked about privatizing Social Security," Bush-Cheney spokesman Reed Dickens said. "That Kerry would use third-hand accounts for false attacks is just another example of a candidate who will say anything."

Kerry also chastised the Bush administration for the shortage of flu shots, asking how the president can keep America safe from bio-terrorism and other threats if he can't manage to keep an adequate supply of flu shots.

"If Halliburton made flu shots there'd be more flu shots here than oranges," he told the South Florida crowd, referring the giant contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

In Tallahassee, Edwards' biggest response, perhaps surprising for a campus rally, came when he mentioned the Bush comments on Social Security from the New York Times Magazine . Sunday night, the issue struck home with both college students and senior citizens who packed into FAMU's quad.

"For parents of students who are here, it means a cut in benefits. For you, the students who are here, it means $2-trillion on your back, $2-trillion of debt that you are going to have to carry," Edwards said. "For George Bush's friends who are money managers it means a trillion dollars into their pockets."