A focal point in the last days of the presidential race, Florida has found itself awash with claims of intimidation, illegal voting and missing ballots reminiscent of the 2000 debacle.
President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry both planned a series of weekend rallies in the battleground and potentially pivotal state that has been one of their most frequent campaign destinations.
With controversy swirling and polls showing the candidates in a deadlock, the two campaigns accuse each other of attempting to rig the vote, and election officials find themselves in the crossfire.
With just days to go to the November 2 election, the controversy has raised the specter of the last presidential vote, the outcome of which was held up for 36 days by legal wrangling and vote recounts in Florida.
The latest twist in the battle of words is a Republican claim that it got hold of a list of illegal voters.
Republican party advisor Mindy Tucker Fletcher said 925 convicted felons, who are not allowed to vote under Florida law, have either done so or requested absentee ballots.
"This is evidence of the law being broken," she said.
But Democrats claim the names were culled from a list of 48,000 alleged felons which Republican State Governor Jeb Bush - a brother of the president - was forced to scrap after it was found to be flawed and to include a number of people whose voting rights had been restored.
"This is one more step to disenfranchise voters by the Republican Party of Florida," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the state's Democratic Party.
"It's curious that the Republicans are putting out this list, it suggests they don't trust their supervisor of elections office, which is under Jeb Bush," said Florida party spokeswoman Alie Merzer.
The latest allegations came on the heels of the embarrassing disappearance of tens of thousands of ballots that fuelled angry protests.
Broward County authorities blamed postal authorities and are now mailing substitutes for the absentee ballots they claim were sent out but that voters apparently never received.
Filmmaker Michael Moore, of blockbuster "Fahrenheit 9/11"-fame, on Thursday joined protesters outside Broward electoral offices in Fort Lauderdale, 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Miami.
"There are 60,000 ballots missing; we'll do what we can to find out who's responsible," said Moore, an outspoken critic of Bush.
He urged voters to turn out massively at the polls to ensure that "they don't get away with it." Many Democrats believe Bush stole the 2000 election when the US Supreme Court halted recounts, leaving him with a 537-vote Florida lead that secured him the presidency.
Democrats also insist Florida's Republican state government, led by the president's brother, has failed to fix the problems that led to the so-called "Florida fiasco."
They claim that new touch-screen machines, which replace the punch-card system that was behind much of the 2000 chaos, could cause renewed problems because they do not print out ballots, making it impossible to conduct a manual recount.
Both campaigns had urged anyone who felt uncomfortable with the touch-screen machines to ask for absentee ballots.
But Republicans are now concerned that sending out duplicate absentee ballots will open the door to more fraud following what they say were thousands of invalid voter registrations sent in by Kerry supporters. Eligible citizens also have the option of casting their ballots in early voting that started on October 18.
More than 1.4 million people reportedly already cast their ballots, leading experts to predict a record turnout.
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