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The long lines of Americans queuing for hours to vote early may be helping to pull Barack Obama all the way to the White House. But on Hallowe’en night yesterday Democrats were still warily watching polling stations for signs of tricks, as well as treats.

More than 20 million early ballots have already been cast and the larger share of these has been by registered Democrats. As Mr Obama embarked on a sweep of eight states in the final 96 hours of the election, his aides said there were real signs that hopes of a surge among first-time voters were being fulfilled.

If they needed a reminder of what can go wrong, there was Al Gore returning to Palm Beach county in Florida yesterday. This was the scene of bitter disputes over hanging chads and butterfly ballots which still rankle eight years after a 36-day recount was halted by the Supreme Court, handing George Bush the presidency. “Take it from me, every vote matters,” Mr Gore said, stepping back on the campaign trail for the first time since losing by little more than 500 votes.

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At an Obama rally in Florida this week, Karen Reynolds said: “This election won’t be in the bag until Barack Obama has been declared the winner. I worry about what the Republicans will pull. They cheat you know.”

A new Simpsons episode being broadcast tomorrow shows Homer trying to cast his ballot for Mr Obama, but finding the electronic voting machine registering six votes for John McCain before it devours him. Now life is resembling art with unconfirmed reports in West Virginia, Colorado, Tennessee and Texas of touch-screen systems recording ballots incorrectly.

Mr Obama has devoted much of his speeches to imploring crowds to vote early and not be deterred by obstacles in their way. His concerted drive to get voters out and some numbers on the board even before Tuesday appears to be paying dividends. One queue in Atlanta, Georgia — a long-shot target for the Democrats where hundreds of thousands of new voters have been registered — was estimated to be 8 to 10 hours from start to finish yesterday.

David Plouffe, Mr Obama’s campaign manager, said that in Nevada 43 per cent of Democrats who voted early were new or sporadic participants, reflecting an effort to improve turnout among young people and racial minorities. In North Carolina, another swing state, 19 per cent of early voters had never taken part in a presidential election before and registered Democrats were outnumbering Republicans by a margin of 35 per cent.

In Florida, 2.6 million people had voted by Wednesday, with 45 per cent Democrats and 39 per cent registered Republicans, according to a study by George Mason University in Virginia.

Fresh arguments are breaking out over voter suppression. In early September, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, instructed election officials to reject registration applications that did not pass a computer match test. Democrats, who complain that this may disqualify voters based on nothing more than a missing middle initial, have recruited a small army of 5,000 lawyers to work inside and outside polling stations in the Sunshine State. Nationally, the Democratic National Committee has established a voter protection hotline. So far, more than 10,000 lawyers have signed up on the committee’s website.

Republican lawyers are also active and have made complaints about fraudulent registrations in Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado and Indiana.

The two teams have been warming up for the fight in Ohio with no fewer than eight lawsuits, including one from the Republicans challenging hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. Mr McCain spent yesterday in the Buckeye State, a crucial battleground that he must hold if he is to stand any chance of winning the White House. His campaign has embarked on a frantic get-out-the-vote operation in the state over the past week, making upwards of 600,000 calls to conservative supporters.

The Republican nominee had some help yesterday, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, finally appearing at his side. At an evening rally in Columbus, Mr Schwarzenegger mocked Mr Obama’s slim physique — “he needs to do something about those skinny legs . . . and beef up those scrawny little arms” — before praising Mr McCain’s tested courage as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. “I only played action men in the movies — John McCain is a real action hero!” he declared, a line that bought the house down.

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