A county in Florida has voted to hire election monitors - normally used to watching for corruption and irregularities in new democracies - to observe upcoming elections.

Miami-Dade County has been stung by the recent voting difficulties in the primary race for the Democratic nomination for governor, and by the massive controversy around the 2000 presidential election.

All of America is watching us, because we've bungled this before

Dorrin Rolle, Miami-Dade commissioner

So the county government narrowly voted on Tuesday to hire experts from the Washington-based Centre for Democracy to watch over its elections on 5 November.

But a spokesman for Miami-Dade's mayor has warned that the plan, approved after appeals from former US Attorney General Janet Reno and many in the county's black community, could be vetoed.

County commissioners voted 6-5 to pay the Center for Democracy $92,000 to watch over the county's running of the elections in which voters will choose a state governor, as well as federal and state lawmakers.

The Washington-based organisation has previously sent monitors to elections in El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Poland and Russia, among other countries.

''All of America is watching us, because we've bungled this before,'' Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who supported the plan, said.

Reno urged the county to bring in the monitors

Opponents of the move felt the plan would only further damage the county's reputation.

"I am not (in) a third-world country and I don't want to feel like one," said Natacha Seijas, one of several commissioners who voted against the motion. "I feel we can supervise it ourselves."

Javier Soto, chief of staff to the Miami-Dade Mayor, Alex Penelas, told the Miami Herald newspaper that the mayor could veto the move and that he would announce his intentions on Wednesday.

Mr Soto said the mayor is worried there is an ''inherent possible conflict of interest'' in paying an organisation that is supposed to perform an independent evaluation.

The spotlight fell on Miami-Dade's election processes again last month, when Ms Reno lost her bid to win the Democratic nomination for governor in the state's primary election.

"There's nothing as good as having people look at what you do," Ms Reno told commissioners before their vote.

Millions spent

Ms Reno's defeat was only confirmed a week after primary voters went to the polls, because thousands of votes had not been counted by faulty voting machines.

Many polls failed to open on time because new hi-tech touch screen voting machines did not work - trouble that was blamed on a lack of preparation and training for election workers.

Voting hours had to be extended after failures in the counties of Miami-Dade and Broward - which, along with Palm Beach, were at the centre of the problems in the Bush-Gore vote.

The state had spent $32m reforming its voting system after the 2000 presidential election, which saw old punch-card voting machines, recounts and court battles combine to delay the result for more than a month.

Meanwhile, major national election legislation - prompted by the problems in 2000 - was overwhelmingly approved by the US Senate on Wednesday.

The bill provides $3.9bn to help states update antiquated voting machines, computerise their registration systems, tighten anti-fraud measures and make voting easier for the disabled.