On Thursday night, more than 200 New York lawyers and law students, all supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry, gathered in a conference room at a law office in Times Square for a primer on Pennsylvania election law.

They'll soon be joining thousands of volunteers -- some Democrats, some Republicans, and some from non-partisan groups -- who will head here on election day in unprecedented numbers, monitoring polling precincts across the state in an effort to avoid the chaos and legal challenges that followed President Bush's minuscule margin of victory in Florida during the 2000 election.

"After what happened in 2000, I want to help anyone I can, Democrat or Republican," said Josh Fogel, 24, a third-year student at Fordham Law School in New York City who will work outside a heavily Democratic Philadelphia precinct on Nov. 2. "We'll be the eyes and ears on the ground."

Public opinion polls have consistently placed New York out of reach for President Bush, so some New Yorkers, along with residents of other states already leaning toward Bush or Kerry, are hoping to make a difference in the election by going to battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio in the days leading up to the election.

In Ohio, the Republican Party met a Friday registration deadline by signing up thousands of paid monitors to watch for ineligible voters at polling places. The Democrats have signed up a smaller number of poll monitors there, but they have registered huge numbers of new voters, and some observers fear the crush of poll watchers and voters could bog down the voting process on election day.

In Pennsylvania, the parties can recruit one poll monitor per candidate to be in the polling site itself, but anyone else, including the many out-of-state observers, can be outside.

"Our goal is to ensure a fair and honest election," said Carl M. Buchholz, general counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania.

The volunteers' stated goal is to block suspicious activities at the polls, while offering help to legitimate voters who encounter problems. If necessary, they will have access to mobile teams of lawyers who will be ready to go to court. Both Democrats and Republicans will be watching each other closely.

Over the summer, New York Democrats started organizing attorneys who were interested in volunteering in swing states.

"The Kerry campaign had only been coming to us for money," said Henry Berger, the campaign's New York counsel, "and we said we can do more than raise money. We tried to put together a project, and the response was overwhelming."

Berger said he expects as many as 1,000 New York lawyers to trek to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida as the election nears. He has been working with party officials in those states to figure out how best to use the volunteers.

Thursday's meeting was attended by Jerry Goldfeder, a prominent professor of election law at Fordham. "I've had to become an expert on Pennsylvania election law," he said, noting that the differences are minimal between the two states.

Harry Litman, a Pittsburgh lawyer and general counsel for the Kerry campaign in Pennsylvania, said the state Democratic Party has not yet decided where to send volunteers. He said that, along with out-of-state volunteers, he expects to have at least 1,500 monitors for the state's more than 9,400 polling precincts.

Fogel said he expects to receive an information packet by tomorrow with his polling assignment, a booklet on Pennsylvania election law, and a list of contact numbers.

The night before the election, he'll stay with students at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and he plans to be at his assigned polling site a half hour before voting begins at 7 a.m.

According to state law, the observers must be at least 10 feet away from the site -- a regulation that individual election judges can interpret differently, so Fogel said he and his fellow volunteers will be setting up a "Lawyers for Kerry" table 100 feet away.

He said they will watch for any suspected cases of voter intimidation. Democrats, he said, are anticipating that some potential voters may be given false information by people who hope to deter them from voting.

That's a charge Republicans pointedly deny. The Democrats "are trying to manufacture controversy to make noise and get media attention" said Mark Pfeifle, a spokesman for the state's Republican Victory 2004 organization.

Pfeifle said the Republicans hope to have 1,000 of their own poll monitors, including at least one in each of the state's 67 counties. Some of those volunteers will come from elsewhere, he said, but most will be local recruits.

Although the potential for legal challenges is high on election day in Pennsylvania, the outlook is better here than in neighboring Ohio, where Democrats and Republicans seem to be on a legal collision course. Democrats registered tens of thousands of new voters in the state, and Republicans responded by signing up 3,600 monitors for inside the polling sites to challenge the qualifications of some of those new voters, The New York Times reported yesterday.

In Allegheny County, both parties have kept pace with registering new voters, and party officials are not as concerned about election day legal battles.

"The poll watchers we're signing up are going to focus on bringing Bush supporters to the polls, not preventing people from voting," said Michael O'Connell, executive director of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County. But, he added, "If a problem arises, we'll be ready for it."

Tom Flaherty, chair of the local Democratic Party, said he has 2,500 committee members who can serve as monitors within the county's more than 1,300 polling sites. The Republicans have about 800 committee members, O'Connell said, but he was confident his party will have plenty of volunteers on election day.

"You'll find neither party is going to have a shortage of bodies in this election," he said.

Voters also will encounter volunteers from the non-partisan group Election Protection, which plans to send another 1,700 poll watchers to Pennsylvania on Nov. 2, including several hundred at about 60 Allegheny County polling places.

"Our role is purely about empowering voters, informing them about their rights," said Perry Lange, senior legislative assistant for People For the American Way, a co-founder of Election Protection, whose volunteers cannot endorse the candidate of either party.

State election officials are preparing for the massive influx of poll observers. "We're aware that these guys are going to be around," said Brian McDonald, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State. "If they get disorderly we'll contact their respective parties and tell them to knock it off."

Gov. Ed Rendell is also sending his own team of attorneys and observers to each county, a decision that has prompted criticism from state Republicans.

Almost everyone involved with organizing the poll watchers says all this pre-election activity is precautionary.

"Our goal in Pennsylvania is to keep the lawyers out of it, although we're ready to come in," Harry Litman of the Democrats said. "If we're lucky, most, if not all, of these volunteers will have a very boring day."