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Election imperfect, but improved

Four years after the embarrassing 2000 recount, the state's voting saw only minor problems, officials say.

Historic voter turnout? Didn't happen.

Chaos from thousands of voter challenges? Never materialized.

But political prophets got one right: long lines.

Florida's presidential election ended on time Wednesday and without widespread complaints, prompting Gov. Jeb Bush to proclaim that the monkey was off Florida's back.

But as canvassing boards continued to tally thousands of absentee and provisional ballots, the governor, election officials and others acknowledged elections still can be improved.

The long lines that were typical in early voting and on Election Day need to be reduced, possibly by an expansion of early voting, several election officials said.

Bush also said he supports upgrading voting machines to create a paper trail, though he repeated his confidence in Florida's current paperless machines.

"My guess is that by the next cycle they will have that technology, and it will be certified," Bush said.

He also said the state may want rules to keep campaign workers further away from voter lines during early voting.

The smoothness of Tuesday's statewide election can be attributed, in part, to President Bush's margin of victory over John Kerry, several expert said. Bush carried the state by 5 percentage points, or nearly 400,000 votes.

"We had a margin of victory that made these other issues irrelevant," said Hayden Dempsey, head of the Bush-Cheney legal team.

Turnout, once expected to surpass the 83 percent record of 1992, when Bill Clinton beat the first President Bush, ended up at about 72 percent, not including 8,000 provisional ballots and tens of thousands of absentee ballots.

The biggest perceived threat to a smooth election never developed Thursday.

Democrats had said they expected Republicans to challenge hundreds of voters. The party had gathered a list of 48,000 felons who might be on voting rolls. Republicans said the challenges might be needed to prevent fraud.

But lawyers reported hearing about fewer than 100 voter challenges.

Mindy Tucker Fletcher, senior adviser to the Republican Party, said the challenges did not happen because workers saw few cases of possible fraud. Voters did not try to cheat, she said.

Democrats accused Republicans of using the threat of challenges to scare away voters.

"Let's assume I'm somebody who is concerned about the police hassling me," said Michael Moskowitz, a member of Kerry's Florida legal team. "If I think I'm going to be challenged at the polls, that suppresses my vote."

Democrats sent hundreds of lawyers to polling sites and sent Republican poll watchers letters reminding them that it is illegal to file a false challenge.

Election officials also made it logistically difficult to challenge many voters. They said people could not be challenged because they appeared on the list of 48,000 felons, which was shown to flawed.

No voter challenges occurred in Duval County, where Democrats feared chaos in largely black precincts.

"I don't think they wanted that kind of anger set in motion," said the Rev. Levy Wilcox.

Bill Horne, a Jacksonville lawyer and Republican poll watcher volunteer, said the party decided "we didn't want to intimidate people."

"We did not want to obstruct the process," he said.

Long lines proved to be the biggest obstruction in many areas Tuesday, and several officials cited the need for improvements.

Election officials in Miami-Dade County said early voting is here to stay and that improvements need to become a legislative priority.

"That's something we are looking at. The demand is there for early voting," said Supervisor of Elections spokesman Seth Kaplan. "We are looking at extending hours, adding centers and making early voting laws more flexible."

Kaplan said election law limits early voting to libraries and city halls.

Further, many Democrats say voting needs to be more citizen-friendly.

"I totally disagree that it was a smooth election," said Ben Kuehne, senior lawyer for the Kerry-Edwards Florida campaign.

Kuehne questioned problems with voter registration rolls that resulted in provisional ballots, as well as the issue of clemency for felons. "Why is it that so few get clemency? It's a political process and it shouldn't be."

A similar complaint occurred outside state elections headquarters Tuesday night, where Democratic lawyers said they were denied access to the office.

Under a state rule, the Department of Management Services closed the R.A. Gray building to the public and allowed only pre-credentialed media inside for election night.

"This is Florida where we pride ourselves on transparency of the process," said Mark Herron, a Democratic lawyer. "But the doors are closed and there is not much transparency."

Times staff writers Joni James, Michael Sandler, Michael Van Sickler, Jennifer Liberto, Steve Hegarty, Alisa Ulferts, and Jeff Testerman contributed to this report.