My friend in Broward County Florida expects that county to help deliver the state to the good guys. Here's the first few paragraphs from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel this morning. The link has the rest.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cvoting29oct29,0,6418321.story?coll=sfla-hom
e-headlines
By Scott Wyman
Staff writer
Overwhelming numbers of Broward County Democrats have turned out to vote early in next week's election in what analysts say could be a bad sign for President Bush's chances to win the state.
Sen. John Kerry's campaign has pressed hard to get voters to the polls early in Broward's Democratic strongholds, knowing it must run up huge numbers here to offset Republican areas in Northern and Central Florida. As of Thursday morning, more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans had either voted at early voting sites or returned absentee ballots in the county.
The success of the Kerry get-out-the-vote drive is raising the stakes for local Democratic officials to fix problems that threaten to dampen turnout. On Thursday, the county ordered early voting centers to stay open late and began resending 16,000 absentee ballots that may have been lost.
"This makes it an extremely competitive situation in the state," said Mitch Ceasar, chairman of the Broward County Democratic Party. "We are on target for where we hoped we would be. People are so upset and distraught by the last four years of this president that they want to exercise their constitutional right to vote as soon as possible."
Pre-election balloting has long been a boon to the Republican Party. To counter that this year, Democratic campaign strategists targeted key bases among minority, senior citizen and union groups. Kerry, Bush and their surrogates repeatedly have come to South Florida over the past two weeks to tout early voting.