Elections supervisors said the campaign is important -- and not just because of the scrutiny placed on the state when it took five weeks to settle the 2000 presidential election.
Florida has new election laws, more than half the state's voters will be using touch-screen ballots for the first time and new political lines drawn this year put many people in different precincts.
"There will be mistakes in this election, there's no doubt about it," said Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor David Leahy. "Every supervisor is working to make it error-free, but when you have this much change occurring in this short a period of time affecting so many voters, there will be problems."
A third of the 946,000 registered Miami-Dade voters are in new precincts this election and it's inevitable many will show up at the wrong polling place, Leahy said.
"A lot of the time the old polling place is [still] a polling place, it's just not theirs," he said.
The attention the media is putting on the Florida election helps inform voters about the changes and puts more pressure on supervisors to get things right, said Theresa LePore of Palm Beach County, who serves as president of the elections supervisors association.
"Every supervisor in the state wants nothing more than to have a good election," she said. "It's been very difficult. Every little thing we do is being watched, right or wrong. When you constantly have everyone watching you, you're overly cautious."
Three ads prepared by Secretary of State Jim Smith's office will encourage state residents to obtain voter-education information, check the information on their voter registration cards and make sure they know what precinct they're in.
The spots each begin with the words "From the Capitol ... Breaking News" and have news program-like music. Each follows with a message from Smith.
"That's kind of our way of attracting attention; we think it's important this year to do everything we can to inform the voters," Smith said Thursday.
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