Conor O'Clery reports from Palm Beach County, the epicentre of the bitterly-disputed presidential election in Florida four years ago
"It used to be that you could have a beer with someone you disagreed with in politics," said financial consultant Abe Raadan, shading his eyes against the hot Florida sun. "Now you can't, it's got so tense, so personal, everybody is so belligerent.
"That's what George Bush has done to this country."
Palm Beach County is the epicentre of the bitterly-disputed presidential election in Florida four years ago that gave Mr Bush the presidency.
Tensions have been running high in the last few days before voting on Tuesday, with accusations of missing absentee ballots, fraud, intimidation, and the prospect of "hand-to-hand combat" at polling stations as both parties prepare to challenge voters.
Outside early-voting polling booths, supporters of both sides have been shouting insults at each other. Many Floridians have already cast their vote under the state's early-voting rules.
Indeed by a show of a hands, the few hundred people gathered in the waterside Meyer Amphitheatre for John Kerry to address them yesterday showed that most had already voted, which made the Democratic candidate's visit to appeal for their support a bit unnecessary.
But the whole point of the visit was to get maximum coverage for a final appeal to Democrats in Palm Beach County and other parts of southern Florida to make every vote count. "The Reds Sox had four games. If they can do it we can," said Kerry as he took the microphone after the usual blast of Bruce Springsteen's No Surrender, referring to the Boston baseball team's shock victory in the World Series.
"Four more days, help is on the way." The crowd of mainly elderly people cheered and applauded. "In four days the campaign will end. This election is now in your hands. You can vote now and every day until election day.
"If you believe we need a fresh start in Iraq, if you believe we can create and keep good jobs here in America, if you believe we can get healthcare costs under control, if you believe in the promise of stem cell research, if you believe our deficits are too high, join me and we will change America."
Early voting began in Florida two weeks ago, and fearing that election day will be as chaotic as 2000, thousands of voters have been queuing daily to vote.
The Democratic mayor of Palm Beach County, Lois Frankel joined Kerry on stage to appeal to the crowd to get family members, neighbours and friends to vote.
"We have waited four years to have our votes fully counted," she cried, adding dramatically: "The destiny of the world is in the touch of your fingers."
In heavily-Democratic Miami Dade County 14 per cent of registered voters, about 150,000 people, have already cast their ballots. "I've a gut feeling that Kerry will win," said semi-retired psychologist Marc Naan.
"A lot of Republican women don't want to say anything in support of Kerry because they don't want to get into trouble, but lots of Americans are patriots and they don't want these divisions.
"Howard Dean energized a lot of young people last year and pushed a lot of buttons. If young people, poor people and ethnic people all vote we will win. If it doesn't work, God help us all."
Florida television and radio are awash with advertisements in the final days of an intense and bitter campaign conducted at a dizzying pace across the state in pursuit of Florida's 27 electoral votes.
Charges and counter- charges have been flying. Republican National Committee member Ed Gillespie said he was "disconcerted" by claims that Kerry supporters were causing blockages at voting sites in Florida and attempting to dissuade backers of President Bush from voting.
"Some folks have been intimidated to the point where they turned away from the lines," he said. Kerry campaign spokesman Christine Anderson dismissed the charge, saying Republicans are trying to keep turnout low.
"This is a very clear strategy on their part to lay the groundwork for election day challenges," she said.
State Republican officials are compiling a list of voters who they claim are not properly registered to protect the "integrity of the process" and plan to challenge them on Tuesday.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida said, "When they're using a list that's very likely inaccurate for challenges, I think we're in for hand-to-hand combat at the precincts."
The issue of absentee ballots continues to plague the election process. Here in Palm Beach County hundreds of members of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans say they haven't received their absentee ballots.
In a last-minute frenzy Broward County election officials worked furiously to send out new absentee ballots to 20,000 voters who said they had not received them. "There will be chaos on Tuesday if they don't get it sorted out," said a Democratic volunteer grimly. "It's a disgrace in a democratic country."