Bush’s strong rationale is “fear factor”

WILMINGTON, Ohio, November 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Hours before polling booths were to open, incumbent George W. Bush and John Kerry closed out their presidential campaigns Monday, November 1, with a multi-state blitz seeking decisive votes in an election locked in a dead heat.

Meanwhile, bitter memories of the 2000 race in Florida were still fresh in the minds of Americans, putting the battleground state heavily under spotlights.

The Republican President and his Democratic rival, both nursing their voices, kept up punishing schedules until the last minute, pitching their messages to undecided voters in the battleground states that are expected to swing Tuesday's ballot, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Bush, 58, kicked off the final day in Ohio as part of a barnstorming final campaign drive that was to whisk him through six states, ending late in the evening in Texas, where he would rest up at his Crawford ranch before Election Day.

“If you believe that America should fight the war on terror with all our might and lead with unwavering confidence in our ideals, I ask you to come stand with me,” he told supporters crowded into a freezing airport hangar in Ohio.

After a morning rally in Florida, Kerry, 60, was set to charge through three other battleground states in the Midwest.

Razor’s Edge

The latest polls showed the race balanced on a razor's edge, with five calling a dead heat and four others giving the president a statistically insignificant lead of one to three points. The percentage of undecided voters varied from two to eight points.

With thousands of lawyers from both camps poised to pounce at any hint of the voting irregularities that tainted the 2000 election, both candidates said it was vital that the outcome of the election be known by Tuesday night.

“I really think it's important not to have a world of lawsuits that will stop the will of the people from going forward,” Bush said in an interview with NBC.

Kerry said he was confident the election would not be decided in the courts, but added that his legal teams would be scrutinizing the polling process.

“We're not trying to stop anybody from voting. We want to make sure people vote,” he told NBC.

In their final rallies and television interviews, the candidates hammered home the same themes that have dominated the election since campaigning began -- the war on terror, Iraq and the US economy -- and staked their rival claims to be the more effective wartime commander-in-chief.

“We need a president who can do more than one thing at the same time,” Kerry told cheering supporters who chanted “two more days” at a late-night rally in Tampa Sunday.

“Americans want to know that I will make the country safe. And I've shown, each step of the way, how I can do a better job than George Bush,” Kerry said in his NBC interview, chastising the president for rushing to war in Iraq and watching over rising unemployment and health care costs at home.

Bush focused on national security, his strongest issue, defending his decision to oust Saddam Hussein and vowing to systematically destroy Al-Qaeda and other networks deemed terrorist.

“The question in this campaign is who has the ability to protect America, who has the goal and the concept and the strategies to keep this country secure,” he said.

“And when all is said and done, I believe the American people will decide it's me.”

The dominating theme of national security was given a twist Friday with the broadcast of a videotaped address to the American people by Washington’s most wanted man Osama bin Laden, who threatened a possible repeat of the September 11, 2001 attacks unless “injustices leading to them were addressed”.

While the Kerry camp hoped Bin Laden's taunting message would remind voters of Bush's failure to snare him, Republicans looked on any rise in public concern as favoring the president, who has consistently polled higher than his opponent on the issue of fighting terror.

A surprise attack on Bush came Monday from China, which broke its practice of not commenting on US presidential candidates to chastise Bush for pushing an “arrogant” foreign policy based on the use of force.

After Ohio, Bush was set to sprint through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico and Texas, while Kerry will be in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio.

In Wisconsin, the opponents are due to hold rallies within an hour of one another on facing banks of the Milwaukee River.

The victor requires a majority of the 538 electoral college votes that decide the presidency and are awarded in separate, mostly winner-take-all races.

The verdict appeared to hinge on the results in Florida and a handful of northern states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Analysts have not ruled out a candidate winning the popular vote and losing the election -- as Democrat Al Gore did in 2000 -- or a 269-269 tie in the electoral vote that could force Congress to decide the outcome.

Bush appeared to have 25 states with a total of 213 electors nailed down, while Kerry had 14 states and the federal district of Washington, DC for 190 electors. This left 11 states with 135 electors up for grabs.

Voter turnout Tuesday could be the key factor, with signs that it may be significantly higher than the 106 million who voted in 2000.

Kerry hopes Iraq and high unemployment rates would give him the White House ticket

Florida Under Spotlight

Complaint sheets in hand, a voters' bill of rights in their kit, a small army of volunteers has descended on 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, reported AFP.

“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,” Chris Ott, a 51-year-old house painter who flew thousands of kilometers (miles) from Vashon, Washington to help monitor the voting, told AFP.

“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 choose 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.