Washington - Bad enough that people were being kicked out of their homes in the mortgage crisis.

But when Democratic activists got wind of a plan by Republicans in Michigan to keep foreclosure victims from voting, they went to court.

The dispute was settled Monday out of court, a peaceful end to another skirmish over voter registration and rights that was typical of the scores expected to arise leading up to the November 4 general elections.

Election officials are bracing for unprecedented turnout and election-day challenges, driven by huge numbers of newly registered voters brought into the system in large part by the campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, 47.

In 13 battleground states alone, more than 3.4 million new voter registrations have been recorded as of last week, compared to 1.8 million new registrations in the same states in 2004, according to Catalist, which tracks voter registration for left-wing organizations.

Obama and Republican candidate John McCain, 72, who trails by a few percentage points in nationwide opinion polls, have each mapped out litigation game plans to carry out their election strategies.

In Florida alone, scene of the drawn-out court battle and disputed recount attempt that was decided in Republican George W Bush's favour in 2000, the Obama campaign has assembled nearly 5,000 lawyers to monitor polling stations, help voters turned away and mediate disputes, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

Until Monday, most of the challenges have been brought by McCain's Republicans scrambling to hold onto swing states that appear to be slipping into the Obama camp, such as Florida and Ohio.

But the Michigan case involved Democrats taking Republicans to court in a state where Obama has a lead of nearly 12 per cent, according to polling averages calculated by realclearpolitics. com.

At issue was an alleged comment by James Carabelli, Republican Party Chairman of Macomb County, outside Detroit. He was quoted by an online news publication as saying that Republicans planned to challenge voters at the poll whose names appeared on foreclosure lists, because they likely had changed addresses.

Such a move could have targeted people likely to vote for Obama out of anger with Republicans, whom many blame for the country's mortgage crisis.

Republican officials denied such plans but agreed to a settlement with Democrats that neither party would view the existence of a person's address on a foreclosure list as a "reasonable basis for challenging the person's eligibility to vote." (dpa)