Americans Wait Hours to Vote; Record Levels Predicted
Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Voters around the country waited for hours to select the next U.S. president, as independent election experts predicted the highest percentage turnout in decades.
Thousands of observers, some independent, others working to help the competing campaigns of President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, are monitoring the voting in such swing states as Florida and Ohio. Voters in those states waited as long as 2 1/2 hours.
``We're in line for record numbers of voters, record numbers of people supervising the process, record numbers of people watching the process and record numbers of people concerned the result might not be what they hoped for,'' said Doug Chapin, director of the nonpartisan electionline.org, which monitors voting reform.
Up to 121 million people will vote, compared with 105 million in 2000, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. That would be 60 percent of eligible voters, the highest percentage since 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, when 61.9 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
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