Your vote has been counted, thank you for voting. 
 
 Many Americans fear that the results of the presidential election will be compromised. Do you? 
 
 So many voters showed up at the Miami-Dade elections headquarters in Doral to cast absentee ballots in person Sunday afternoon that the department shut down the operation less than two hours in, saying it did not have enough resources to help everyone. 
 
 What began Sunday morning as an attempt by the Miami-Dade elections department to let more people early vote devolved into chaos and confusion only days before the nation decides its next president. 
 
 Call it the debacle in Doral. 
 
 Elections officials, overwhelmed with voters, locked the doors to their Doral headquarters and temporarily shut down the operation, angering nearly 200 voters standing in line outside — only to resume the proceedings an hour later. 
 
 On the surface, officials blamed technical equipment and a lack of staff for the shutdown. But behind the scenes, there was another issue: Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. 
 
 The Republican had never signed off on the additional in-person absentee voting hours in the first place. 
 
 “That was counter to what I said on Friday, which was we were not going to change the game mid-stream,” he said. “I said, ‘No, there’s no way we did this.’” 
 
 But Gimenez, who is in a nonpartisan post, quickly realized it was better to let the voting go on, and the voting resumed. 
 
 The mayor said he found out early Sunday afternoon — from his daughter-in-law — about the extra voting hours. 
 
 The move had been approved by Deputy Mayor Alina Hudak at the request of Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley. The plan was simple: Allow voters to request, fill out and return absentee ballots in person for four hours Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Early voting the Sunday before Election Day used to be allowed. But it was eliminated by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott last year after Barack Obama used early voting to help him win Florida in 2008 — and therefore the presidency. 
 
 Gimenez said his initial reaction was to stop the last-minute Sunday voting. 
 
 But by then, around 180 people stood in line outside the elections office at 2700 NW 87th Ave. They shouted “Let us vote!” and banged on the locked glass doors. 
 
 “This is America, not a third-world country,” said Myrna Peralta, who waited in line with her 4-year-old grandson for nearly two hours before the doors closed. “They should have been prepared.” 
 
 “My beautiful Sunshine State,” she lamented. “They’re not letting people vote.” 
 
 Minutes earlier, a department spokeswoman had said the office did not have enough resources — only one ballot printer, five voting booths and two staffers — to handle the throng of voters and would begin turning new voters away. 
 
 “We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” spokeswoman Christina White had said. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.” 
 
 Calvin Sweeting, a 59-year-old from Opa-locka, was told he would be the last person to vote. 
 
 “They said I was the lucky one,” he said, shrugging. “It didn’t seem fair to me.” 
 
 Or to Jean Marcellus, 52, who stood behind him. 
 
 “This is ridiculous,” Marcellus shouted, holding up the ticket he was given to secure his place in the queue. “I’m the next one!” 
 
 Nearly all the voters stayed in line until a campaign worker reported her car had been towed from a private parking lot across the street. Scores of people ducked out of the line to check on their own cars. A second car had been towed. 
 
 Behind closed doors were back-and-forth phone calls among the department, the county attorney’s office and the mayor, who eventually decided to let the people outside the elections department vote. Democrats also unleashed a torrent of phone calls to reporters and the county. 
 
 “I’m upset at this change, but at the end, when you have 200, 300 voters out there ready to go, you really can’t disenfranchise them,” Gimenez said. Of the whole situation, he added: “I’m certainly embarrassed.” 
 
 The elections office reopened its doors at 3 p.m., after being closed for about an hour, apologizing and announcing that it had added a ballot-printing machine and more poll workers and would remain open until all voters in line at 5 p.m. had cast their in-person absentee ballots. 
 
 The crowd cheered. Around 400 people stood in line at 5 p.m. Campaign workers passed out bottled water and granola bars. 
 
 Despite lines up to seven hours long at times during eight days of early voting, Gimenez had decided late last week not to ask Gov. Scott to extend early-voting hours in Miami-Dade. The last early-voting polls officially closed at 7 p.m. Saturday, but they remained open until the last voter in line checked in with a poll worker — about 1 a.m. Sunday. 
 
 Gimenez defended his decision Sunday to refrain from asking the governor for more early-voting hours. 
 
 “We all knew what the rules were. When you start doing things like that, you’re opening to criticism of favoring one side or the other,” he said. “All of us knew it was going to be eight days of early voting. It was going to end on Saturday. There is going to be hundred of polling places [open] on Tuesday.” 
 
 The county did add poll workers, machines and voting booths to early-voting sites to alleviate some wait times. 
 
 On Sunday, Gimenez said he was angrier at Hudak, his deputy, than at Townsley, the elections supervisor. 
 
 “I’m going to have to deal with this internally,” he said. “I’m not saying somebody’s going to be lose their job, but somebody made a poor error in judgment that’s not really helping the community.” 
 
 Hudak told Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4 that she approved the decision, which at the time she did not see as a major policy shift. 
 
 “I apologized to the mayor,” she said. “I should have told him. I made a bad call.” 
 
 Gimenez said the elections department wanted to offer more hours of in-person absentee voting in part because some voters had yet to receive ballots the county had mailed them due to a post-office glitch. 
 
 Opening the elections office from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. was a work-around to a provision in the state law that eliminated early voting the Sunday before Election Day. The Florida Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in the wee hours of Sunday morning seeking to somehow extend voting in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties before Tuesday. 
 
 The law allows elections supervisors to accept in-person absentee ballots through 7 p.m. Tuesday — including Sunday, at the elections supervisor’s discretion. As of Friday, Miami-Dade and Broward had planned to open Sunday only for voters to drop off absentee ballots. 
 
 Miami-Dade switched gears to also let voters ask for a ballot and fill it out on the spot. Palm Beach and two Tampa Bay-area counties, Hillsborough and Pinellas, did the same. 
 
 Broward did not initially follow suit but then a spokeswoman said it would try to accommodate voters — after assisting people who had made appointments to cast their ballots Sunday. 
 
 But there were no lines Sunday afternoon at the Lauderhill satellite office located at 1501 NW 40th Ave. Poll workers said they had assisted voters who had appointments as well as voters who had dropped by without an appointment to fill out a ballot. 
 
 Voters across the state can request and cast absentee ballots in person Monday. They can also drop them off at elections supervisor’s offices — but not at their precincts — on Election Day. 
 
 The Democrats’ lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court, argued that an emergency judge’s order was necessary to “extend voting opportunities” before Tuesday in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, including allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person. 
 
 It’s unclear exactly what more a court could have done, two days before Election Day. The lawsuit did not ask U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz to reopen all early-voting sites. 
 
 “The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote. Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, and others refused to line up altogether,” the lawsuit said. “These long lines and extreme delays unduly and unjustifiably burdened the right to vote.” 
 
 An attorney for the Miami-Dade elections supervisor filed a motion Sunday morning saying the lawsuit was moot because the county would allow for in-person absentee voting Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups had asked the governor late last week to extend early-voting hours by executive authority. Scott declined Thursday night. 
 
 On Friday, Monroe County Elections Supervisor Harry Sawyer Jr., a Republican, sent the governor a letter asking for more hours. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner responded that the early-voting reports he was receiving from elections supervisors across the state were positive. 
 
 Scott signed a law last year reducing the number of early-voting days to eight from 14 and eliminating voting on the Sunday before Election Day, which Democrats used to turn out supporters in 2008. The new law guarantees one Sunday of early voting. 
 
 The number of maximum hours offered stayed the same on the books, but four years ago, then-Gov. Charlie Crist effectively extended early voting by another 24 hours. 
 
 Separately, the party sued in Orlando circuit court asking to extend early-voting hours in Orange County after a bomb scare temporarily closed a polling place. On Sunday morning, a judge ruled that the Winter Park early-voting site should open for four hours. 
 
 Excluding that site and the counties that allowed in-person absentee voting, more than 4.4 million Floridians had voted early or absentee by Sunday morning. More than 2.4 million people had voted early — most of them Democrats. More than 2 million had voted absentee — most of them Republicans. 
 
 In 2008, more people voted early, and fewer voted absentee. 
 
 Miami Herald staff writers Marc Caputo, Diana Moskovitz and Charles Rabin contributed to this report. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 Photo 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 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. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 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. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “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.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 “He’s giving it all of his heart and his passion to help the people of his state,” Mr. Romney said of the governor. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 Photo 
 
 “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.” 
 
 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.” 
 
 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. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “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.” 
 
 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?” 
 
 “No,” the crowd cried out in response to each question. 
 
 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.” 
 
 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. 
 
 After Iowa, Mr. Romney held rallies in Ohio and Virginia. He planned events in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire on Monday. 
 
 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.
– There were chaotic scenes outside Miami-Dade County election headquarters yesterday after voting was abruptly shut down as hundreds of people waited in line. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a Republican, ordered a halt to voting after discovering that his deputy mayor had agreed to the election supervisor's request to allow voters to request and return absentee ballots for four hours, Miami Herald reports. The state's GOP-controlled legislature has eliminated early voting the Sunday before Election Day, but the law allows elections supervisors to accept in-person absentee ballots at their discretion. Voters outside the headquarters banged on the glass and chanted "Let us vote" after the shutdown. After about an hour, Gimenez relented and allowed the angry crowd to vote. "I'm upset at this change, but at the end, when you have 200, 300 voters out there ready to go, you really can’t disenfranchise them," he said. Before the Miami-Dade debacle, Florida's Democratic Party filed a lawsuit seeking to extend early voting after long lines Saturday prevented many people from casting their ballots, the New York Times reports.