That streak ended after the retired hospital worker's polling place was moved from her apartment complex to a building a mile away.

"I felt very bad," Prescod said, "because I felt it was my civic duty to vote."

She blames her absence on a mixture of physical infirmities and political connivance. Bad knee, bad back and bad faith, she says, on the part of Bucks County officials.

Prescod, who is black, is the lead plaintiff in a federal voting-rights lawsuit scheduled to be heard tomorrow in Philadelphia.

The suit accuses Republican officials of deliberately suppressing the turnout of minority and foreign-born voters - many of them poor, elderly or frail - by moving their decades-old polling place to a less accessible site.

"They intentionally set out to disenfranchise the most vulnerable among us," said Marc Weinstein, a lawyer for Prescod and her neighbors.

Bucks officials say they acted on two voters' complaints about crime in the Creekside Apartments on Knights Road, home of Prescod and 75 percent of the district's mostly Democratic voters. In court filings, county lawyers say residents' voting rights "have not been denied or abridged for any reason whatsoever."

Tomorrow in U.S. District Court, Judge Petrese B. Tucker will hear arguments on whether to restore the Creekside poll in time for the November election.

As the hearing has neared, the long-smoldering dispute has been reignited by a string of stunning new disclosures:

The two voters whose letters prompted the move were Bensalem Republican activists. One was a district committeewoman who admitted in a deposition last week that she did not write the letter she signed. The other was a man currently serving as a committeeman.

As far back as 2004, Bensalem Republican leader Mike Brill urged county elections director Deena Dean to move the polling site, Dean said in a recent deposition. Among his reasons, Dean testified, was that Creekside "was a Democrat poll."

Unnamed county officials intimidated Dean and "worked me over pretty good" before her Sept. 17 deposition, according to an e-mail allegedly written by Dean and now filed as a court exhibit. The e-mail, sent to a recipient whose name was blacked out on the public file, says that Dean had been "too afraid" to admit her fear of answering questions during the deposition.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin placed Dean, a 30-year county employee, under a protective order. The order forbade lawyers on either side in the case from contacting her.

On Thursday, Tucker issued a gag order, forbidding lawyers or witnesses from commenting on the case or releasing more depositions.

Dean said Wednesday that she could not discuss the case. Brill, the Bensalem GOP leader, referred questions to his lawyer, Elliot Kolodny, who did not return a call.

Partisan fights over polling locations are not unusual, but few turn into federal cases, political observers say.

In 2004, a Republican effort to relocate 63 Philadelphia polling places, most in minority districts, was filed too late for consideration. Otherwise, "that would have wound up in court," said Bob Lee, the city's voter-registration administrator.

At issue in Bensalem is a single district of just 1,335 registered voters. Still, Bucks County is seen by many as a critical battleground in a swing state that could help decide the presidential race, so each vote is coveted.

Creekside is heavily populated by minorities and low-income residents without cars, the lawsuit says. For about 30 years, voters in Bensalem's Lower Middle 5 district had cast their ballots in Creekside's community room.

In the spring of 2007, the county Board of Elections - at the time consisting of three Republican judges - moved the site to Polanka Hall, a Polish-American social hall one mile to the north.

Walking there from Creekside requires a trek along busy Knights Road, where there is no sidewalk. A pedestrian then must cross a five-lane intersection at Street Road, where an average of 58,000 vehicles pass daily.

"I had no way of getting there myself," said Prescod, who had had a knee replacement a few months before last fall's election. "I think it all has to do with politics."

But county officials point to statistics showing 84 assaults and two fatal shootings at Creekside in the five years before the decision to move.

Democrats said there never had been Election Day trouble at Creekside. Residents held public protests, and last spring petitioned the county to restore their polling place.

The petition was denied, 2-1, by the county commissioners, who serve as the elections board except in years when their seats are on the ballot.

"I think the fix has been in on this from the very beginning," said Democratic County Commissioner Diane Marseglia, who backed the Creekside appeal. "I am embarrassed and aghast that this type of underlying racism is still occurring."

County spokeswoman Stacey Hajdak said Republican Commissioners James Cawley and Charles Martin could not comment. In a statement, Hajdak said the county "offers all voters the same opportunity to exercise their fundamental right to vote in a safe environment in our over 300 polling places."

In November 2005, Democrats had shaken Bensalem Republicans' long-held dominance by winning four school board seats and electing a council member for the first time in 15 years.

Moving the polls from Creekside, Weinstein said, was "a desperate and mendacious ploy to hold power."

The effect on voter turnout, not surprisingly, is in dispute.

Creekside advocates note that turnout in the 2007 general election was down by 33 percent from 2005, the previous off-year general election.

County officials use different comparisons showing gains. Spring primary turnout, below 10 percent in 2006 at Creekside, rose to 13 percent in 2007 and 25 percent this year.

Weinstein argued that a high-profile county commissioners primary inflated the 2007 numbers, and the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama battle stoked this year's turnout.

His opponents, he said, "are comparing apples with oranges."