http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/24/national/24FLOR.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=The party had barely begun when Shirley Green Knight arrived with her optical-scan voting machine, lugging it out of a pickup truck and stationing it between the D.J. and the food tent. The sight was no longer strange to the people of Gadsden County, where Ms. Knight, the elections supervisor since 2001, attends most communal gatherings with the machine and a gently pleading message: Your vote will count this time, so please, please come out.
Gadsden County, a quiet stretch of tomato fields and piney woodlands hard against the Georgia border, had the highest rate of disqualified ballots in Florida in 2000: 12 percent of those cast in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Almost 2,000 county residents voted in vain that year, and cynicism still courses through the heavily Democratic county of 45,000, as regular as summer rain.
"All my life I have never seen the TV stations declare a winner, then change their minds," said Greg Johnson, a fourth grade teacher in Quincy who still wonders if his ballot landed in the scrap heap. "The Supreme Court decided that election, not us. I like politics, but people in power can get away with stuff and I'm just not sure this time."
As Election Day 2004 draws near in a battleground state whose 27 electoral votes could prove crucial to the victor once again, a movement is rising in poor black communities to register and to educate, reassure and entreat. A top goal is to change the mindset of people like Mr. Johnson, who still harbor deep suspicions about everything from the accuracy of voting equipment to how polling places are chosen and what role Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, will play in Florida's outcome.
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