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JAMIE THOMPSON and ADAM SMITHLong waits were common as bay area voters jostled to cast ballots Saturday. About 2-million are expected to vote before Tuesday.
They came with paperback books and crossword puzzles, folding chairs and hot cups of coffee, lining sidewalks before the sun rose on Saturday morning, ready to vote.
Thousands packed early voting sites across the Tampa Bay region in what elections supervisors said might have been the busiest day yet. No exact figures were available Saturday, but poll workers said anecdotal evidence suggested increased turnout.
"The lines are double their length previously," said Pinellas volunteer Gerald McManus. "We're hearing about long lines everywhere."
People arrived by the thousands in Tampa, where two women stopped at three different polling places before finding a wait they could handle - two hours.
"Never in my life have I seen something like this," said 76-year-old Liduvina Padilla, standing with her daughter, Norma Givens, and another 200 voters shortly before noon at the Jan Platt Library in south Tampa.
In Pasco, people were still waiting in line to vote two hours after the polls officially closed.
At least one shouting match erupted at the polls, with Bush and Kerry supporters arguing in Clearwater over who would be the best commander in chief.
It happened about 4 p.m., Lee Ann Duncan said, when she asked a poll worker to remove a woman handing out Kerry buttons near voters at the Clearwater Courthouse. Hearing her request, other women in line knew she must be a Bush supporter, and started shouting: "Bush is a killer!"
"Ladies, ladies!," a poll worker said, jumping between them. He asked the Kerry volunteer to hand out buttons elsewhere, Duncan said.
"I wanted to vote early because I didn't want to be pressured on Tuesday," said Duncan, 44, of Clearwater. "You could feel the tension in there immediately."
Sweaty and tired, fanning themselves with handouts about the constitutional amendments, many predicted that lines would be shorter on Tuesday, when hundreds rather than dozens of voting places are opened.
Still, Saturday offered something that would be in short supply on Tuesday: time.
"I can't do it next week," said Michael Guidi, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida. Come Tuesday, he'll be sitting in physics class. He drove home to Oldsmar to cast his ballot early.
A least 100 voters stretched on either side of him at the East Lake Community Library in Palm Harbor, where a cheery poll worker offered Halloween candy from a plastic pumpkin and shouted, "Two hour wait, folks." She said lines have been long all week, with some people ordering pizza while they waited on Friday.
In Hillsborough County, the earliest voters began arriving at 5 a.m., waiting four hours for their turn at the touch screen. Those who arrived when the doors opened at 9 a.m. already faced as much as a three-hour wait.
"I wish they could do something to speed this up," said Jane Orts, who had been waiting for two hours with her husband Joe in downtown St. Petersburg. The lines stretched around the block when they arrived, but Joe Orts didn't want to take a half day off his job at a warehouse to vote on Tuesday.
"Hopefully, they'll have more sites next time," he said, as a man offered bottled water to the crowd and shouted, "Kerry water!"
An estimated 2,700 people voted Saturday in Pasco County. Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning said he heard some waited in line for four hours to vote. Elections officials suggested many in line at the central Pasco office drive to Dade City, where the line was shorter. Even with the drive, the wait would have been shorter.
But many refused and about 7 p.m. - two hours after the polls closed - about 100 people remained in the voting line at the central Pasco office.
Browning said he was surprised by the turnout. Before early voting began, he projected about 20,000 of the county's 266,000 voters would take advantage of the opportunity. In reality, he said, that number will be nearer 30,000.
"I'll be so glad when this is over," Browning said. "I am just so, so tired."
More than 1.8-million of the 10.3-million Floridians registered to vote have cast ballots, either early or absentee. That's nearly 21/2 times the number of people who voted early in 2000. The number was expected to rise to 2-million by the time polls open Tuesday.
Turnout was heavy across the state, just as it has been since early voting began Oct. 18. Broward County citizens waited nearly four hours; Seminole County voters waited as long as 21/2 hours.
Meanwhile, tensions rose in the final frantic days of the election, with Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of dirty tricks. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, Kerry's Florida campaign chairman, said Republicans are disproportionately putting poll watchers in predominantly minority precincts and said it could signal plans to intimidate or slow down voters in heavily Democratic neighborhoods.
While many counties are not releasing the specific precincts for approved poll watchers, those that have show a trend, Nelson and Meek said.
In Miami-Dade County, Democrats said, 59 percent of predominantly black precincts have at least one Republican poll watcher, while 24 percent of predominantly white precincts have them. In Leon County, 64 percent of black precincts have at least one Republican poll watcher, compared with 24 percent of majority white precincts. In Alachua, 71 percent of black precincts have a Republican poll watcher assigned, while 24 percent of white precincts do.
"It seems to be a plan to challenge the most fundamental right - that's the right to vote," Nelson said.
Bush-Cheney adviser Mindy Tucker Fletcher dismissed the complaint, saying Republican poll watchers are being concentrated where Bush performed best and worst in 2000, because those are where "we thought the Democrats are most likely to cheat."
Fletcher said the party has not yet decided what criteria it will use to challenge voters, except that poll watchers will not challenge people found to be registered in two states, which is not illegal. They haven't decided whether to challenge people they believe are felons ineligible to vote.
With the midday lines stretching into the hundreds in Hillsborough, some candidates seized the captive audience for some old-fashioned campaigning. Public Defender Julianne Holt's supporters passed out coffee and doughnuts. County Commission candidate Bob Buckhorn's wife offered sunscreen to voters whose skin tingled under the hot sun.
"I haven't had many takers," said Cathy Lynch Buckhorn, noting that her concerns about sun damage to voters came from her work as a physician and not at her husband's prompting.
Pinellas poll workers began receiving complaints from voters as the day went on. The county needed either more touch screens at polling places, they said, or more bathrooms.
Times staff writer Letitia Stein contributed to this report, which also contains information from the Associated Press.