Voters Head to Polls for Midterm Elections
Tue Nov 5, 3:12 PM ET
By JERRY GRAY The New York Times
URL:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=68&ncid=716...
With control of the Senate, the House, and three-quarters of the governorships at stake, voters turned out for midterm elections today.
Just how large a turnout will be the key to the outcome of several pivotal races, especially for the Senate.
"This is going to be settled by a relatively small number of votes, potentially, and a relatively small number of contests in both the House and the Senate," President Bush (news - web sites) said at one campaign stop on the eve of the election. "And it's going to be a close election."
In at least half a dozen House races, redistricting after the 2000 census has turned some once safe districts into political battlegrounds. In a number of states Minnesota and New Jersey most notably late fill-ins for candidates sent election officials scrambling to reprint ballots and fretting over what impact the changes would have on thousands of votes cast by absentee ballots.
In other states, election officials worried over whether new voting machines would stand up under their most severe test to date.
Residents of New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia were the first to vote today, with polling booths opening at 6 a.m. Eastern time.
In Florida where Jeb Bush, the president's brother, is facing a tough challenge to hold on to the governorship the polls opened at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Federal election monitors were stationed in the counties of Broward and Miami-Dade where voting irregularities tainted the 2000 presidential elections and cropped up again in the Democratic primary for governor earlier this year.
Officials said that there was a moderate to heavy turnout in Broward and Miami-Dade counties in the first two hours after the polls opened.
The Justice Department (news - web sites) has deployed about 400 observers to monitor today's voting in 26 counties across 14 states.
President Bush, who has pursued a punishing campaign schedule on behalf of Republican candidates, voted just after 8 a.m. today (9 a.m. Eastern time) in his home state of Texas in Crawford, where he has his ranch.
"I hope people vote," Mr. Bush told reporters as he left his polling place, a fire house. "I'm encouraging all people across this country to vote."
Asked about the Republican Party's prospects, the president did not respond verbally, but appeared to signal that the races could go either way as he flashed a thumbs-up but then turned it to the side.
Mr. Bush, seemingly relaxed in jeans and a leather jacket, showed up at the polling station with his wife, Laura, at his side.
He has said that he and his wife planned to spend the day watching election returns and celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, which is today.
Traditionally, the party of the sitting president suffers during midterm elections.
In an effort to reverse that trend and to try to help Republicans wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats, the president visited 17 cities in 15 states in the last five days leading up to Election Day.
Beginning with a Jan. 9 event for his brother Jeb in Florida, President Bush attended 67 fund-raisers, taking in more than $140 million and eclipsing records set by President Clinton (news - web sites).
In addition, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) set new records, too, bringing in more than $40 million at over 70 fund-raisers.
At stake today are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 36 governorships.
Across the country, there are scores of initiatives or proposed amendments on the ballot: bans on smoking in most workplaces, efforts to reduce the number of students in public classrooms. In Nevada, voters were deciding whether to make it the first state to legalize the personal use of marijuana.
But it is the political races that commanded the most attention and energy of the day.
Currently, Republicans control the House with 222 members over the Democrats 209. There are two independents in the chamber and two seats are unfilled.
But most of the political attention has been focused on the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans each hold 49 seats and there are two independents.
Up until election eve, the Democrats controlled the Senate by a single vote. But on Monday, Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota named a fellow Independence Party member, Dean Barkley, as interim senator to replace the late Senator Paul Wellstone. The appointment left the Senate split at least for the moment evenly between the Democrats and the 49 Republicans with Mr. Barkley and Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont as independents.
There are 14 Senate seats currently held by Democrats and 20 seats currently held by Republicans on the line today and control of the Senate has come down to a handful of toss-up races Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota, Georgia and Louisiana, which had been in the Democrats' column and Arkansas, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina and perhaps Texas, where Republicans were the incumbents.
In the statehouses across the nation, the Republicans currently hold 27 of the governorships and the Democrats hold 21 and there are two independents Mr. Ventura in Minnesota and Gov. Angus S. King Jr. in Maine. Of the 34 seats being contested today, 23 are currently held by the Republicans, 11 by the Democrats and 2 by the independents, who are not seeking re-election. |
