Voting disputes: A perfect legal storm in Ohio and Florida? There was the actual storm. Then there is the metaphorical perfect storm. With polls showing a close presidential race, fears have risen that the integrity of Tuesday's presidential election could be thrown into doubt by either damage from super storm Sandy, which has created enormous voting challenges in New York and New Jersey, or the confluence of ballot box disputes in battleground states. Armies of lawyers were at the ready Monday as tussles continued over voting, especially in Ohio and Florida, the two states considered most likely to throw the presidential election into an overtime ballot dispute reminiscent of the Bush-Gore race of 2000. David Beattie, a veteran Democratic pollster in Florida, predicted litigation in his state and Ohio whatever the outcome Tuesday. "I would be shocked if there wasn't," he said. Democrats will see it as precedent for how future elections are held. And Republicans will do it if Obama's elected because they have nothing to lose. Seldom, if ever, has an election for president been preceded by so much angst over the mechanics of voting. "I'm 54 years old, and I've never seen an election like this," said Patrice Jones of Temple Terrace, Fla., near Tampa, who was picking up an absentee ballot Monday. She said there always seemed to be interminable lines at the early voting site near her house, as there have been at many such sites in Florida. The lines in Florida were "a clear legacy of the effort to restrict voting this year," said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, a nonpartisan think tank that studies voting issues. The center has been among the voting rights groups complaining that Florida was threatening the right to vote by eliminating early voting in some counties on Sundays - a popular time for African American voters - and cutting back on other hours when many voters might be free. They said that early voting has become popular in Florida, as in other states, precisely because there are inadequate facilities for voting on election day, and voters are eager to avoid long lines then. After a turbulent weekend featuring early-morning legal challenges by Democratic lawyers and a fracas at the Miami-Dade elections office, there were few problems reported Monday. The Broward County elections office - the only South Florida office not to open Sunday - was open and handing out absentee ballots until 5 p.m. Lawyers filed a federal lawsuit seeking to keep the election offices open past Saturday. About 22% of the county's voters have already cast ballots, he said. Elections officials in Florida, like those in other important swing states, were bracing for potential trouble on Tuesday from groups organized to challenge voter credentials, such as True the Vote or a local group called Tampa Vote Fair. Rick Hasen, a law professor at UC Irvine who follows election law closely, posted on his blog Monday: "Even though Ohio is giving it a run for its money, Florida is doing whatever it can to be the next Florida." But as Hasen suggested, Ohio was the center of considerable dispute. The latest was over a directive issued Friday evening by Jon Husted, Ohio's Republican secretary of state. It concerned paper provisional ballots that some voters must use when their eligibility can't be verified on election day. And federal courts have ruled that Ohio must count the provisional ballots of voters when poll worker error caused their ballot information to be filled out incorrectly.