Americans Vote to Decide Control of Congress

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Americans Vote to Decide Control of Congress

Americans cast their ballots on Tuesday for the midterm elections that will decide the control of Congress in the coming two years.

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Americans cast their ballots on Tuesday for the midterm elections that will decide the control of Congress in the coming two years.

If Republicans keep their House edge and pick up just one or two Senate seats, they will control Congress. Democrats, for their part, would take control if they can hold on to the Senate and addseven House seats.

Most analysts predict the outcome will not be different from the current political landscape -- the Republicans holding the House, Democrats commanding the Senate.

President George W. Bush voted at a fire station on Tuesday near his Crawford ranch in Texas. "I'm encouraging all people across this country to vote," he said, before driving off to get ready to return to the White House.

Bush, who wrapped up a 5-day, 15 state campaign blitz on Monday,hopes to become the third president in a century to gain House seats in a midterm election after Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

While Republicans looked to President Bush's popularity to helpextend their eight-year rule over the House of Representatives, Democrats hoped history and voter unease about the economy would work to their advantage. But public opinion polls show little evidence the nation's lackluster economic performance is hurting Republicans.

Thomas Mann, a political analyst of the Brookings Institution, called this year's election the most contested since 1954, when a slim Republican majority in the Senate turned into a slender Democratic majority, and Democrats also retook the House.

At stake on Tuesday were all 435 House seats, several dozen of which were hotly competitive; 34 Senate seats, of which six to eight looked like tossups; and 36 governorships.

Of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, Republicans have 223, and Democrats 208, with one independent and three vacant.In the Senate, each party has 49 seats, with two independents.

The Justice Department has dispatched more than 400 observers to 14 states to monitor the voting, the most ambitious monitoring of the nation's ballot boxes since the 1960s civil rights era.

Polling booths opened at 6:00 a.m. (1100 GMT) in the states of Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia. Alaska was to be the last state to close at 0400 GMT Wednesday.

Computerized voting systems were used in many states, includingFlorida where ballot foul-ups held up the 2000 presidential for five weeks.

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