Jeb Bush under fire after new Florida election fiasco

The Bush family's worst nightmare – the protracted presidential election fiasco of 2000 – returned to haunt them when another Florida election remained deadlocked for a third day yesterday because of defective voting systems, incompetent poll workers and the suspicion of fraud.

Counting at last came to an end in the Democratic Party primary for the state governor's race, giving Bill McBride, a relatively unknown Tampa lawyer, a slim lead over Janet Reno, a former attorney general. But neither side was prepared to declare the contest over, and Ms Reno said she was considering a formal challenge to the results.

The most troubling questions surrounded Florida's two most populous counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, where machines were not plugged in, results for whole precincts were not tabulated, poll workers either failed to attend on time or left early and hundreds of voters were in effect disenfranchised after experiencing delays of several hours.

In Miami-Dade, one precinct reported a 900 per cent voter turn-out, and another showed just one ballot cast out of 1,637 registered voters – results that raised questions of fairness as well as competence.

Although the primary had nothing directly to do with the Bushes, there were signs yesterday that the glitches could pose a serious headache for Jeb Bush, the sitting Florida governor, as he fights for re-election.

Mr Bush had vowed, after the 2000 presidential contest, to overhaul the state's voting systems so there would never be a repeat of the 36 days of uncertainty and legal wrangles that finally, amid many misgivings, put his brother George W into the White House. On Tuesday, he was forced to declare a state of emergency and extend the opening hours of polling stations by two hours to give people another opportunity to exercise their right to vote. He will now be made to answer, at least by his opponents, for everything that has gone wrong despite the $125m (£80m) investment in new voting machines since the presidential election.

"He is the governor of the state, and he assured the people that this problem was fixed," said Ronald Klain, a senior adviser to Al Gore, the ultimate victim of Florida's voting irregularities in the presidential race. "This is an embarrassment to him."

The issue also risks becoming an embarrassment to President Bush as he campaigns for November's mid-term elections, reminding everyone of the dubious circumstances under which he came to power just when he had begun to think the issue was dead and buried.

Congressional leaders who failed to push through nationwide electoral reform last year said yesterday they were determined to try again. Leading Democrats said the President may yet regret his decision, last month, to remove from the federal budget $400m earmarked for electoral reform.

"How many times do we have to go through this before we decide that we're going to help the states and counties do this right?" said Richard Gephardt, the senior Democrat in the House, who is busy campaigning to take control of Congress in November.

In Florida, the arguments were already being rehearsed for the gubernatorial election, with Governor Bush pointing out that the worst glitches took place in the two most Democratic counties in the state. "It's not an embarrassment to me; it should be an embarrassment to the people running elections in Miami and Broward Counties," he said.

Bob Poe, the head of the state Democratic Party, responded: "For Jeb Bush, being governor apparently means taking credit when things go right and running from responsibility when things go wrong."

For the Democrats, Mr McBride's apparent victory over Ms Reno was another plus, since the former attorney general is considered a highly polarising candidate, especially among Cuban Americans and centrist swing voters. They now hope Mr McBride can unseat Governor Bush – a potent symbolic blow against America's leading political dynasty.