Election monitors see problems for US vote

1.00pm

WASHINGTON - International election observers predicted problems with new rules and technology for Wednesday's US presidential election that were designed to avoid a repeat of Florida's counting fiasco four years ago.

Almost 90 observers from Europe's top rights watchdog - conducting the group's first full-blown monitoring of a US vote - fanned out across the country on Monday on the lookout for snags with electronic voting machines and provisional ballots, said spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir.

Opinion polls say Tuesday's vote is too close to call between President George W Bush and Democratic Sen John Kerry.

Ironically, the main worries of observers for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe relate to innovations that electoral authorities introduced hoping to avoid the problems from 2000.

Disputes in that election over recounts and voter eligibility spawned legal battles in Florida, a state Bush won by 537 votes to capture the White House following a long recount dispute ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court.

"There are often problems when you introduce new systems -- that's just a fact," Gunnarsdottir said. "We want to see how the United States implements the changes."

The OSCE observers will work at voting centres in Florida, which is again expected to be close, another battleground state, Nevada, and perhaps in Ohio's tight race, she said.

They will also observe in California, Illinois, Virginia and Maryland, states where the races are expected to be less close.

The OSCE, which comprises 55 countries, does not have a mandate to judge the fairness of the vote but on Friday it will give a preliminary assessment of any shortcomings and issue a full report in a month.

In a September critique, the OSCE warned of the potential for fresh legal disputes and delayed results because many new electronic voting machines do not produce a paper ballot that would be needed for any manual recount.

More than 45 million Americans -- a third of registered voters -- will vote on ATM-style touch-screen machines that replaced the punch cards that made Florida famous for the "hanging chads" that authorities scrutinised to see whether voters punched proper holes in their ballots.

The OSCE also voiced concern the uneven application of rules introduced after 2000 on provisional ballots - which can be cast even when the voter's eligibility needs to be checked later - could lead to drawn-out legal battles.

- REUTERS