MIAMI - Complaint sheets in hand, a voters' bill of rights in their kit, a small army of volunteers has descended on the battleground state of Florida to watch over Tuesday's voting and help avert a repeat of the 2000 election debacle.

One group, Election Protection, says it is deploying 25,000 volunteers nationwide, thousands of them in Florida, the state that delayed the outcome of the last presidential vote by 36 days before the US Supreme Court halted vote recounts.

"The 2000 elections were a wake-up call," the watchdog group says in its welcoming letter handed out to volunteers streaming in from around the country.

"I was unhappy about what happened in Florida in 2000," said Chris Ott, a 51-year-old house painter who flew thousands of kilometers (miles) from Vashon, Washington to help monitor the voting.

"I know they'll try dirty tricks again," he said, without specifying who "they" are.

"We're also here to help people who don't know what their voting rights are," said Ott, who attended a recent poll monitor training session.

Civil rights lawyer Reggie Mitchell explained the oddities of the Florida voting system to the audience, some of whom were wearing the group's distinctive black T-shirts.

The volunteers were told that, unlike the poll watchers sent by the parties and the candidates, they must stay at least 15 meters (50 feet) from the polling area, unless a voter asks for their assistance.

Several of the watchdog group's member organizations, which include the giant AFL-CIO trade union and black civil rights groups, support Democratic candidate John Kerry, but Mitchell stressed that volunteers must steer well clear of any partisan issues.

Ott agreed this was crucial to the volunteers' mission. "We are here to help people vote for Bush, Kerry or whoever they chose and make sure their vote counts," he said.

Mitchell also pointed out that the volunteers were not there to do electoral officials' work. "But it's our job, if they get it wrong, to help them get it right."

Some of the volunteers have already been working for several days during early voting that started on October 18 and has drawn almost 20 percent of Florida's 10-million-strong electorate.

Several problems have already cropped up, particularly from voters who said they never received the absentee ballots they requested weeks ago. Thousands of those ballots apparently got lost in the mail.

The poll monitors are also on the lookout for "challengers" who approach voters, telling them they are not eligible to cast a ballot. Democrats claim many of those individuals are sent out by the Republicans to intimidate voters.

Mitchell claimed a sheriff's deputy in West Palm Beach, "at the instigation of a certain party," challenged voters waiting in line. The group was considering filing a lawsuit because police officials are not allowed in the immediate vicinity of polling stations unless there is a disturbance.

In another incident, a deputy tackled, punched, handcuffed and arrested a journalist who took photos of the line of voters outside a West Palm Beach polling office on Sunday, local media reported.

Police claim Palm Beach County electoral authorities have banned journalists from talking to or photographing voters, though this had not been previously announced.

© Copyright 2004 AFP

###