Long lines and computer glitches disrupted the first day of early voting in Florida on Monday, bringing back memories of the 2000 presidential election debacle.
Hundreds of voters in the Tampa Bay area, Orlando and South Florida waited for hours while technicians brought computers back on line. Dozens of voters walked away rather than wait in the heat.
They still have two weeks of early voting before Election Day, but that was little comfort for Floridians hoping to avoid an embarrassing repeat of the 2000 recount.
"It's discouraging," said Sumpton Jackson, 49, a mechanic who was among the the first in line to vote at the College Hill library, a largely black neighborhood in Tampa where computers were down for nearly two hours.
Jackson said he left after waiting 90 minutes and saw about 40 people, including some in wheelchairs, heading out.
At the Pinellas Park public library, voters were handed a ticket and urged to come back in a few hours.
"It's like a Disney Fastpass," said site manager Bob Cafazzo, who scribbled times on a writing pad, then handed pieces of paper to hundreds of voters.
"I feel like I am being turned away to vote," said Judy Heintzelman, 63, who planned to return. "It's strange. ... It's like getting a ticket at a deli."
Others said they preferred returning later to standing in line for hours.
It was a similar scene in other counties across Florida.
In Broward County, the computers did not work properly until about 2 p.m. Supervisor Brenda Snipes called the problem "more than a hiccup."
"It's pretty disappointing," Snipes said. "It's something we had not planned on."
In Orange County, the computer system went down for about 10 minutes, said Margaret Dunn, senior deputy elections supervisor. She speculated a faulty Internet connection may have been to blame.
Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox called on elections supervisors to distribute paper ballots when voting computers do not work properly.
"Such minor issues are to be expected," Maddox wrote in a letter to supervisors, "and we have every reason to expect that your diligent staff members will solve these problems."
Three of the counties with problems - Hillsborough, Orange and Broward - use the same Internet provider to connect computers at polling sites with a central computer database, said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood.
The computer glitch did not affect the controversial touch screen machines installed in 15 counties after the 2000 election.
Instead, the problem shut down the laptop computers that elections officials need to check voters' identities. When voters arrive at the polls, officials use those computers to verify voters' identities and ensure they get the correct ballot.
When computers were down, elections officials were forced to use phones to call for the voting data, a far more lengthy process.
Nash said most of the problems were fixed quickly, and that overall the first day of voting had gone smoothly.
"For everyone thinking the sky was going to fall today, it really didn't," said Mindy Tucker Fletcher, senior adviser to the Florida Republican Party. "We had a few minor problems."
Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson insisted the "news of the day" wasn't that scores left early voting sites without casting ballots, but that thousands came and stayed until they did vote.
Johnson estimated 4,000 ballots were cast Monday, compared with about 2,200 in four days of early voting for the Aug. 31 primary.
He said his office would deploy 11 more touch screen voting machines by this morning to help ease the lines.
Johnson arrived at the College Hill Library about noon and explained that the computer glitch was caused when a routing problem with the Florida Information Resource Network, or FIRN, knocked out Internet service to libraries around the state.
Rogelio Dean, Hillsborough's director of information technology, said Monday that "some routing equipment failed" at FIRN, causing Internet service at Hillsborough's libraries to fail sometime between 10 a.m. and about 12:45 p.m.
"They're usually fairly reliable," said Dean. "It's coincidental it happened on the first day of early voting."
Officials in Pinellas' election office were still trying to figure out Monday evening what went wrong.
"I know they are working on it," Deputy Supervisor of Elections Joan Brock said.
She said laptop computers were not working at voting sites in East Lake, Tarpon Springs and Dunedin.
At the main elections center in Largo, it took 45 minutes for workers to get the computers working when the polls opened, said Robin Mitchell, an election observer for the Pinellas Democratic Party.
In Pinellas Park, the morning crowd grew so large that people began to argue about who had arrived first, said Cafazzo, the site manager.
Election officials had set up five voting machines right in front of the library's entrance.
A conference room off to the side could have been used, but it was booked months ago . Election officials "did not call early enough," library director Gary Bogart said.
- Times Staff Writers Joni James, Jeff Solochek, Justin George, and Leanora Minai contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press and South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Howard Troxler: