The complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Richmond to order the state to count absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received by Nov. 14. It contends that thousands of troops' ballots — many of which would go to McCain — will not be counted.

The deadline for ballots to be received is 7 p.m. Election Day, which is Tuesday.

The lawsuit is the second in a week to challenge preparations for the presidential election in Virginia, where Barack Obama hopes to become the first Democrat since 1964 to win the state's 13 electoral votes. Polls over the past week show him about even with or slightly ahead of McCain.

More than 436,000 new Virginia voters have registered since Jan. 1, and about 500,000 people — a tenth of the state's electorate_ have cast absentee ballots.

The NAACP sued the state last week, alleging it allotted too few voting machines for the enormous number of voters in majority black precincts expected to be drawn by the prospect of electing Obama as the first black president.

U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams on Monday declined to order longer voting hours and other changes requested by the NAACP. He did order the elections board to publicize the availability of curbside voting for older or disabled voters and the fact that people in line by 7 p.m. will be allowed to vote.

A hearing on McCain's lawsuit is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Tuesday before Williams.

That lawsuit alleges that ballots for overseas military voters were mailed too late to ensure they are returned by the deadline. Defendants are the chairwoman, vice chairman and executive secretary of the state elections board.

A 1986 federal law requires ballots to be mailed to military voters in foreign countries at least 45 days before the election, which this year would have been Sept. 20. The lawsuit alleges the state didn't have the ballots printed and sent to local officials by then, meaning they may not have been mailed overseas until October.

Ashley L. Taylor Jr., an attorney for McCain, said tens of thousands of oversees military absentee ballots could be voided unless the deadline is extended.

"The last thing you want is to have a service member in Afghanistan or Iraq who received his ballot too late not being able to vote in this election," Taylor said.

Board Chairwoman Jean Cunningham said late Monday afternoon the board had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

Lawyer Dennis Leavitt also decried any suggestion that Julie Puffinburger might have been responsible for the abduction of her son Cole, after a police lieutenant told a judge she had previously spread hoax stories that the boy had been kidnapped.

Cole Puffinburger was taken by two men posing as police officers after they ransacked his mother's house in what police said was message from drug dealers to Cole's grandfather. The boy was found safe four days later.

Police did not immediately respond to requests to confirm Leavitt's account that Julie Puffinburger received an ominous written message directed at her father, Clemens Fred Tinnemeyer.

Police have alleged that Tinnemeyer, 51, disappeared in May after stealing millions of dollars in drug proceeds from "Mexican nationals" and methamphetamine traffickers. He is in federal custody in California as a material witness in the kidnapping case.

Leavitt said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that two detectives who met with Julie Puffinburger about the July 13 warning note "stated they could not do anything because there was no imminent threat and advised Julie to buy a shotgun." Leavitt said she did not buy a weapon.

Deputy FEMA Administrator Harvey E. Johnson Jr. said he intends to improve the help that the agency provides to Texans whose home were damaged or destroyed by the September hurricane. He said FEMA will deploy mobile homes to the hardest-hit areas more rapidly, review rules that might be causing premature denials of assistance and provide more resources to Texas.

He said Friday he has put more personnel into Texas housing assistance programs. He invited energy company officials into FEMA's Texas field offices to help provide electric power to mobile homes housing storm victims, and he has started a review of procedures that result in relatively few families being approved for assistance when they first apply.

Ike came ashore near Galveston on Sept. 13, causing at least $11 billion in damage to Texas.

Johnson met this past week with local officials in Galveston, the Beaumont-Port Arthur area and Houston.

The dispute between the broadcast networks and the Federal Communications Commission is the court's first major broadcast indecency case in 30 years.

At issue is the FCC's policy, adopted in 2004, that even a one-time use of profanity on live television is indecent because some words are so offensive that they always evoke sexual or excretory images. So-called fleeting expletives were not treated as indecent before then.

The words in question begin with the letters "F" and "S." The Associated Press typically does not use them.

Chief Justice John Roberts, the only justice with young children at home, suggested that the commission's policy is reasonable. The use of either word, Roberts said, "is associated with sexual or excretory activity. That's what gives it its force."

Justice John Paul Stevens, who appeared skeptical of the policy, doubted that the f-word always conveys a sexual image.

The justices declined, without comment, to consider the constitutionality of a voluntary program passed by the Legislature and that took effect in 2004.

The program provides campaign money for state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals candidates if they agree to fundraising restrictions leading up to the general election. The decision came on the eve of an election in which all but two of the 13 candidates for those seats Tuesday participated in the program.

The decision leaves a federal lower court ruling in effect that upheld the law, which has been a model for other states, including New Mexico.

"This gives supporters of judicial public financing and public financing in general confidence and assurance that the long line of decisions (supporting) public financing ... are still the law of the land," said Paul Ryan, an attorney with the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, whose group earlier filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the law.

Former Supreme Court candidate Rusty Duke and the North Carolina Right to Life Committee sued over the law in 2005, arguing it restricted free speech rights in cases where outside groups or nonparticipating candidates exceeded spending thresholds.

The qualifying candidates receive matching "rescue funds" to counter such injections of money.

Clemens Fred Tinnemeyer, 51, and a woman described as his companion, Terri Leavy, 42, have been held as material witnesses in California since their separate arrests in the kidnapping investigation. Cole Puffinburger was abducted Oct. 15 and found unharmed late on Oct. 18 on a Las Vegas street.

Tinnemeyer and Leavy were to appear before a federal magistrate on charges of interstate and foreign travel or transportation in aid of racketeering enterprises, said Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Gregory Brower.

Las Vegas police have characterized the boy's abduction as a message from "Mexican nationals" and methamphetamine traffickers aimed at Tinnemeyer, who police alleged made off with millions of dollars in drug money. Police said two gunmen posing as police officers tied up the boy's mother and her boyfriend and ransacked their home before taking the boy.

Tinnemeyer was arrested Oct. 17 in Riverside, Calif. Leavy was arrested Oct. 19 in Fontana, Calif.