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As Candidates Make Final Pleas, Legal Battles Begin
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama and Mitt Romney entered the final 48 hours of campaigning on Sunday with bravado tinged with urgent warnings to their supporters that the hard-fought race for the White House remained razor close.
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — President Obama and Mitt Romney hunted for last-minute support on Sunday in a frenetic sprint across battleground states, even as their parties faced off in the first of what could be a growing number of legal disputes over presidential ballots and how they are counted.
The rivals started the day with rallies in the two competitive states where the presidential campaigns begin every four years and where the fates of their political futures could be decided this year at the last minute: Iowa and New Hampshire.
In Florida, the state’s Democratic Party filed a lawsuit on Sunday morning that would force the Republican-led government to extend early voting in South Florida after complaints that extremely long lines on Saturday had prevented some people from casting their ballots. The Republican-controlled Legislature cut back early voting, which ended Saturday, from 14 days to eight.
Joined by former President Bill Clinton in the shadow of the New Hampshire State House in Concord, Mr. Obama vowed to continue his efforts to improve a recovering economy and expressed the confidence of an incumbent that voters in the battleground states would give him the chance to try.
The lawsuit was followed by a chaotic day in the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County, which opened one of its election offices for two hours to accept completed absentee ballots and then shut down only to reopen again on Sunday afternoon. Three counties said they would open again on Monday, but Democratic lawyers will continue to argue in court that in-person early voting should continue through Tuesday in Broward County.
But he also betrayed the nervousness of a first-term president whose hopes for another four years — and the opportunity to continue shaping his legacy — hinges on a half-dozen states that could go either way on Tuesday.
In Ohio, Republican election officials will go to court on Monday to defend an 11th-hour directive to local election officials that critics say could invalidate thousands of provisional ballots by forcing voters to attest to the type of identification they provide.
“I am not ready to give up the fight, and I hope you aren’t, either, New Hampshire,” Mr. Obama said at a rally that attracted thousands of people, his voice already growing hoarse at the start of a long day of campaigning. “We have come too far to turn back now. We have come too far to let our hearts grow faint.”
Together, the pre-election legal skirmishes were a potential preview of the clashes that could emerge in as many as a half-dozen swing states over Tuesday’s voting. The closeness of the races in those states has intensified the stakes of voter turnout, smooth operations at polling places, ballot problems and recounts.
“We will win New Hampshire,” he concluded. “We will win this election. We will finish what we started. We will renew those bonds that do not break.”
In the battles, Republicans are mobilizing to defend against what they say is the potential for voter fraud, and Democrats are preparing to protect against what they say are efforts to suppress voting rights.
Mr. Romney spoke moments earlier in Des Moines, also expressing the certainty of success and telling about 4,400 supporters that the clock had nearly run out on the president’s time in office. He promised a new era of economic hope for families who are struggling.
“The larger issue, in my view, is the scale of the effort that is required to have Election Day run smoothly,” said Robert Bauer, the chief counsel for Mr. Obama’s campaign. “Any number of things can go wrong, not by anybody’s fault or intention, but we are fully prepared and so, we believe, are election officials around the country.”
“Instead of building bridges, he’s made the divide between our parties wider,” Mr. Romney said. “Let me tell you why it is he’s fallen so far short of what he’s promised: it’s because he cared more about a liberal agenda than he did about repairing the economy.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney presented themselves as agents of change while painting the other as an obstacle — final arguments in a nip-and-tuck race that may hinge on the success of the campaigns’ elaborate turnout operations.
Mr. Romney is racing from swing state to swing state with the intensity of a candidate who recognizes that he is trailing in the polls — if only slightly — behind Mr. Obama in many of the states he must win to accumulate the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president.
“The question of this election comes down to this,” Mr. Romney told a crowd of about 4,500 on Sunday morning in Des Moines. “Do you want four more years like the last four years, or do you want real change? President Obama promised change, but he couldn’t deliver it.”
“We thank you; we ask you to stay with it. All the way, all the way to our victory on Tuesday night,” Mr. Romney told the crowd, urging it to work hard in the last hours. “It’s possible that you may have some friends or maybe even family members who haven’t made up their mind yet who to vote for.”
Speaking to 23,000 people on a high school football field in Hollywood, Fla., Mr. Obama scoffed at Mr. Romney’s bid to claim the mantle of change, deriding him as a political quick-change artist who is repackaging the failed policies of previous Republican administrations.
The two candidates have scheduled a flurry of rallies in the next two days to drum up the kind of enthusiasm that they hope will be evident at polling places on Tuesday.
“When you make this choice, part of what you’re choosing is who do you trust,” Mr. Obama said. “After four years as president, you know me by now. You know I mean what I say and I say what I mean.”
Mr. Obama drew a crowd estimated at 14,000 people who gathered for an outdoor rally below the gleaming dome of New Hampshire’s capitol. It was bright and chilly, recalling any number of days that he and other candidates had walked the streets of Concord to win the nation’s first primary every four years.
Racing the sun as well as the clock, both campaigns brimmed with confidence about their chances on Tuesday, though polls showed Mr. Obama holding a slender lead in several of the battleground states he needs to win the Electoral College. That advantage was evident in the itineraries of the two men on Sunday.
Not far from where Mr. Obama spoke was a reminder of how New Hampshire almost dashed his dreams in 2008. On a line of granite stones in front of the State Library are chiseled the names of the winners of past primaries, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose victory in 2008 halted, for a time, Mr. Obama’s surge after he had won the Iowa caucuses.
While each covered familiar ground from New Hampshire to Ohio, Mr. Romney sought to open a new front with a rally in Pennsylvania. Tightening polls have given him hope that he can take the state from Mr. Obama, who won there by a double-digit margin in 2008. But the president’s advisers dismissed the foray as a desperate move by a challenger running out of other paths to victory.
The president was to move on to Florida and Ohio on Sunday before making final stops in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa on Monday. Mr. Obama is expected to head home to Chicago on Tuesday to watch returns from his campaign headquarters.
At the rally in Morrisville on Sunday, Mr. Romney made a point of mentioning a high-profile supporter, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose lavish praise of Mr. Obama’s leadership after Hurricane Sandy has raised Republican eyebrows.
Mr. Romney’s schedule on Monday resembles the president’s as he heads to the handful of states that could determine the results on Tuesday. Mr. Romney plans events in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire on Monday after visiting Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia on Sunday.
“He’s giving it all of his heart and his passion to help the people of his state,” Mr. Romney said of the governor.
But Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney were only part of the battle on Sunday: their running mates, campaign advisers and a number of surrogates spread out in the swing states and made television appearances in an attempt to amplify the campaign messages.
In Hollywood, Fla., Mr. Obama was endorsed by Pitbull, a Cuban-American hip-hop artist, one of many celebrities lined up by the campaigns to help draw crowds. In Pennsylvania, the Marshall Tucker Band warmed up the audience for Mr. Romney, while Stevie Wonder played “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” for Mr. Obama at a rally in Cincinnati.
Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is spending Sunday in Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. began the day campaigning in Lakewood, Ohio, near Cleveland, and he was scheduled to travel to both Fremont and Lancaster, Ohio, before flying to Virginia, where he is scheduled to campaign in Sterling, a Washington suburb, and Richmond on Monday.
Hours earlier in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama spoke to 14,000 people beneath the gold dome of the State House in Concord on a bright, chilly day that recalled any number of days that he and other hopefuls had walked the streets in their quest for a victory in the nation’s first presidential primaries.
In Lakewood, Mr. Biden called for a return to a more bipartisan era, recalling Republican leaders including former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who lost the Republican primary this year to a Tea Party-endorsed candidate; and former Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Alan F. Simpson of Wyoming and Bob Dole of Kansas. “It used to work,” Mr. Biden said. “We’ve got to get back to doing it again.”
Nearby was a reminder of how the state almost dashed his dreams in 2008. On a line of paving stones in front of the New Hampshire State Library are chiseled the names of winners in the state’s primary, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose victory there halted, for a time, Mr. Obama’s surge after he won the Iowa caucus.
He suggested that Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan would not be bipartisan leaders, saying, “I’ve never met two guys who are more negative about the country.” Mr. Biden also strongly criticized the Republicans over their stance on women’s issues, saying their views had not evolved for the 21st century.
On this Sunday, however, Mr. Obama had the fortifying presence of former President Bill Clinton, who noted approvingly in his introductory speech that Mr. Obama wanted to accomplish many of the same things that Mr. Clinton had during his two terms in office.
Meanwhile, the top strategists for the presidential campaigns made their final appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows. Both sides described get-out-the-vote machinery that they said would provide the margin of victory.
“The test should be: What did the president do? What are the results? And compared to what?” Mr. Clinton said. “Compared to what could have happened, Barack Obama has done a good job.”
“We think we’re closing with strong momentum,” David Plouffe, the president’s senior adviser, said on the ABC News program “This Week.”
Savoring the moment, his voice not yet raw from too many speeches, Mr. Clinton gleefully accused Mr. Romney of shifting his position on the bailout of the automakers so many times that he could find work as “chief contortionist in Cirque du Soleil.”
“The president is having terrific events out there,” he said. “So I’m confident, two days from now, the president will be re- elected. We have the support to win this election.”
Moments earlier, in Des Moines, Mr. Romney told his supporters that the clock had nearly run out on the president’s time in office, and he promised to usher in a new era of economic hope for families who are struggling across the country.
Mr. Plouffe dismissed the claims by Mr. Romney’s team that he would will win the election, but acknowledged — as did Mr. Obama during his remarks in New Hampshire — that victory was dependent on the campaign’s workers on the ground.
“Instead of building bridges, he’s made the divide wider,” Mr. Romney said. “Let me tell you why it is he’s fallen so short of what he promised: it’s because he cared more about a liberal agenda than he did about repairing the economy.”
“We’re throwing everything we can at this, but this really comes down to our amazing volunteers, our staff out in the field who have to make sure the people who support the president exercise their right to vote,” Mr. Plouffe said. “So that’s our biggest task right now, from a political standpoint, is to make sure that we get our vote out.”
Mr. Romney led the crowd in a call and response: “I mean, do you think Obamacare created jobs? Did his war on coal, oil and gas create jobs? Did Dodd-Frank regulations help banks make more loans? Does raising taxes put people to work?”
Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, also appearing on “This Week,” offered a very different assessment. Mr. Gillespie said that Mr. Obama was not doing as well as he did four years ago and would lose the White House to Mr. Romney.
“No,” the crowd cried out in response to each question.
“No 1, their ground game is not superior and, No. 2, I think those undecided voters are going to turn out, and they’re going to break strongly against the president,” Mr. Gillespie said. “When I look at the intensity numbers, when I look at being on the road for three days with Governor Romney and the crowds, when I look at the undecideds, I believe that Governor Romney will not only win on Tuesday, I believe he could win decisively.”
Iowa was also the scene of skirmishing over voting, as Republicans on Sunday night accused Democratic operatives of encouraging older voters to illegally fill out absentee ballots for their family members. A letter to the state’s top election official from the chief counsel of the Republican National Committee said that a news report of “the alleged conduct of Democratic and Obama operatives, if true, is highly disconcerting.”
The outcome could be affected by last-minute arguments over early and absentee voting, a subject over which the two parties have battled in court for months.
With the election being waged most intensely in fewer than a dozen states, the candidates seemed to be shadowboxing each other, with one arriving in a state just hours after the other left.
Ohio’s top election official, Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, will be back in court on Monday to defend a last-minute decision that critics say could invalidate thousands of provisional ballots.
After Iowa, Mr. Romney held rallies in Ohio and Virginia. He planned events in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire on Monday.
Late last week, Mr. Husted issued a directive to county election officials saying that voters must correctly submit a form detailing the type of identification provided with their ballots. If the form is improperly filled in, Mr. Husted said, the ballot will not be validated. Voting-rights advocates quickly filed suit in federal court, saying that the directive was inconsistent with earlier court rulings and with Mr. Husted’s previous instructions, which said that election officials — not voters — should fill out the form.
Mr. Obama went from Concord to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Cincinnati. He then headed for Aurora, Colo., and was scheduled to arrive in Madison, Wis., not long before dawn on Monday.
In Florida, a judge extended the early voting hours in Orange County after Democrats filed a lawsuit that cited a bomb threat that shut down an early voting location there for several hours on Saturday.
Ashley
Parker contributed reporting from Des Moines, Lizette Alvarez from Miami, and Michael Barbaro from Morrisville, Pa.
Democrats filed another suit to extend early voting across Florida. The balloting officially ended on Saturday. Republican lawmakers had shortened early voting to eight days this year, from 14 days four years ago. Democrats have complained that the action was taken to make it harder for supporters of Mr. Obama to cast their ballots.
In Miami-Dade County, election officials said they would keep their office open on Sunday to accept absentee ballots even though in-person early voting has ended.
Mark Landler contributed reporting from Concord, N.H., and Ashley Parker from Des Moines.
