US: As the November mid-term elections approach, one of the last things Republicans want reminded of are the dimpled chads in Florida that helped give President Bush a doubtful legitimacy.
But it has been déjà vu in Dade County this week, where voting in the Democratic primary for governor was plagued by irregularities. If anything things have got worse.
For example: officials placed computer programming cards upside down in machines; poll workers were told to extract a "master activator" from new touch-screen machines after two rather than eight minutes and machines went blank; machines correctly programmed did not work; poll workers ringing for instruction were met with busy signals; some precinct stations lost votes, like Sans Souci Mano, crowded all day, where only one vote was recorded.
Columnist Dave Barry offered a desperate solution in the Miami Herald: "My suggestion - call me crazy - is that we print the ballot on paper, with a box next to each candidate's name. We instruct a voter to put an X in their candidate's box. Then we have human beings count the Xs."
An Omaha company supplied the touch-screen machines for Dade County. In Palm Beach County there were no problems. The machines there, which took only 30 seconds to activate, were supplied by Irish-run Sequoia Voting Systems in California, which the Jefferson Smurfit Group sold recently to the British group De La Rue.
Despite the debacle, dark horse Bill McBride (above) declared victory by 8,100 votes on Thursday night over one-time favourite Janet Reno, who is refusing to concede and may take legal action.
Governor Jeb Bush, the President's older brother, hopes the former attorney general prevails. He would be seriously challenged by the moderate, folksy McBride in November.
The "Re-elect Jeb Bush" campaign has been running attack ads against the Tampa lawyer, who was a Marine infantry commander in Vietnam, and likes to say he is the only candidate "who was on the working end of a rifle".
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Janet Reno's downfall would be a second defeat for a former Clinton administration official in the current primary elections. A week ago, Andrew Cuomo tearfully withdrew from the democratic race for New York governor. The former US housing secretary was running far behind state comptroller Carl McCall, who will now face Republican governor George Pataki.
Bill Clinton told him consolingly as he made the announcement: "I am the only person standing on this stage whose political career is over." No one believed that for a moment - on either count. The conventional wisdom is that big names like Bush and Cuomo (his father was governor Mario Cuomo, below) may not cut much ice with an electorate turned off by corporate sleaze and top family connections.
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The end of Cuomo's candidacy marks another step in the demise of the Kennedy family dynasty. His wife is the daughter of Robert Kennedy. Voters were recently reminded of the dark side of Camelot with the conviction of family member Michael Skakel in the killing of a teenager 27 years ago.
In Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy's eldest daughter, won the nomination for Democratic governor but her big lead over Republican Bob Ehrlich has collapsed.
Mark Shriver, son of President Kennedy's sister Eunice, surprisingly failed to get the nomination for Democratic Congress candidate in Maryland's 8th district even though his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, campaigned for him.
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The September 11th commemorations and the Iraq crisis have pushed politics out of the headlines and also shifted the media focus away from corporate sleaze, which is something of a relief for the CEO-dominated White House. But the scandals haven't gone away. On Thursday, New York prosecutors charged Tyco International's former chief executive Dennis Kozlowski and another officer with stealing more than $170 million from a company they ran as a "criminal enterprise".
And the case of Martha Stewart (below), the American home-making icon, was referred by a congressional committee to the US Justice Department to consider criminal charges.
The big talking point in corporate America, however, is the extent of retirement benefits given to former General Electric boss Jack Welch, disclosed in his divorce case. These include lifetime use of GE's Boeing 737 planes and of an expensive Manhattan apartment, a car and driver, a cook and housekeeper, food, wine, laundry, flowers and toiletries, satellite TV at his four homes, and tickets for the New York Metropolitan Opera.
The disclosure tests the claim by Mr Bush that his reforms are effectively tackling corporate greed. GE also paid for Welch's membership of Augusta Golf Club where the Masters are held - the most coveted of corporate perks - but GE may not want to pay this in future.
The National Council of Women's Organisations was rebuffed by the all-male club when it inquired if it would admit women.
Club chairman Hootie Johnson has cancelled the Masters' sponsors, Citigroup, Coca-Cola and IMB, before they pulled out to avoid guilt by association. Most corporations have policies that prohibit gender discrimination and members like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates may have to resign.
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When Mr Bush told the UN on Thursday that in Iraq "wives are tortured in front of their husbands; children in the presence of their parents", it stirred memories of his father, George Bush, telling Americans in 1990 before the Gulf War of 22 babies torn from incubators by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait and left to die. The claim was backed up by emotional testimony on Capitol Hill by a 16-year-old Kuwaiti girl.
When the war was over it emerged she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and had been coached by PR agency Hill & Knowlton.
Also before that war, officials at the Pentagon, under then defence secretary Dick Cheney, briefed reporters about top secret satellite images of Iraqi troops massing on the border with US ally and oil supplier Saudi Arabia. The St Petersburg Times in Florida acquired commercial Soviet satellite images of the same time. There were no Iraqi troops. The Pentagon pictures remain classified.
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Footnote. The latest anti-terror weapon used by the White House is sand. When Mr Bush dined at the American Express building in Manhattan on Thursday evening surrounding streets were blocked with sanitation trucks loaded with sand to prevent a suicide bomber driving through at speed.