Early polling has started in the US presidential election, but voters are already reporting problems with the new voting system in the state of Florida - scene of electoral chaos in the 2001 election.

Punch cards which caused "hanging chads" and widespread confusion during the last presidential ballot have been replaced with touch screen machines in many parts of the state.

Today, one of the electronic systems crashed shortly after it was switched on to allow Floridians in Orange County to start casting early votes.

The machines have been criticised because many do not provide a paper reading of how votes are cast, making a recount of a disputed result impossible.

As an alternative, some polling stations are providing voters with conventional ballot papers as an alternative.

But a Democratic state legislator said that when she asked for an absentee paper ballot, she noticed that it was incomplete.

Shelley Vana, from Palm Beach County, centre of the last election’s debacle, said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight.

"This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can’t imagine I would be the only one getting it," she said.

Florida proved controversial at the last election because the entire outcome hinged on the result it returned.

The race between George Bush and his 2001 Democratic challenger, Al Gore, was so close that it depended on Florida to decide the election.

But the punch card system meant many of the ballots were incorrectly completed, leading to disputes about which cards were valid and which were not.

In the end, after a month of recounting, the Supreme Court was asked to intervene. It halted the recount and Mr Bush won the election by just 537 votes in Florida.

Florida is one of a growing number of states which now opens polling up to two weeks before the election. The votes cannot however be counted until November 2.

Lawsuits contesting ballots, voter registration and voting machines have already been filed in the state, and both Democratic and Republican parties have hired an army of attorneys to patrol the election.

It was initially hoped that the touch screen machines would prevent a repeat of the 2001 embarrassment.

But when they began using the machines in Orange County today, the system briefly crashed, paralysing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs.

Early voting also got underway in Texas, Colorado and Arkansas. Other key states this year have already begun in-person voting, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

The early voting continues at a limited number of sites in each county until Election Day on November 2, when regular polling stations open.

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