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Bot for city elections 2000
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Florida recount begins; 3 in Palm Beach County sue, ask revote
sun-sentinel.com staff & wires
Web-posted: 7:41 p.m. Nov. 7, 2000
Updated at 6 p.m. Wednesday
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(Mark Foley/AP)
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Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, left, reveals how close the state's presidential vote is to Republican Party officials Mark Mills, center, and Jamie Wilson at a 5 a.m. Wednesday meeting in Tallahassee.
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RealAudio: Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore speaks
See the ballot.
Three Palm Beach County residents filed a lawsuit on Wednesday asking that a new election be held in the county because of irregularities in the presidential ballot.
The lawsuit, filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court against the county's vote canvassing board and election officials, claims the listing of presidential candidates on two pages confused supporters of Vice President Al Gore, who fear they accidentally cast their votes for Reform Party Candidate Pat Buchanan because of the way the punch-card ballot was laid out.
"Plaintiffs request the court find the ballots deceptive, misleading and confusing and ask that a new election occur," the lawsuit says.
Lawyers for the Democratic Party said that the ballot design is illegal and that they may ask for a revote in Palm Beach County. No action has been taken by the party as of yet.
Buchanan got 3,407 votes for president in the heavily Democratic county Tuesday, more than he received in any other Florida county, according to unofficial returns from all precincts. With 100 percent of precincts reporting statewide, Gore was behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush by fewer than 1,800 votes, and Florida held the key to the outcome of the national race.
"I think I voted mistakenly for Buchanan because his dot appeared between Bush's and Gore's," said 76-year-old Stanley Haber of Boca Raton, who went to Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections offices to complain. "I think there should be a totally new vote."
Two larger counties south of Palm Beach both had much lower Buchanan results -- 789 in Broward County and 561 in Miami-Dade County. In Duval County, a much more conservative county in north Florida, only 650 Buchanan votes were cast.
The confusion apparently arose from the way Palm Beach County's punch-card style ballot was laid out for the presidential race. Candidates are listed in two columns, with holes down the middle between the columns, to the right or the left of each candidate's name.
The top hole was for Bush, who was listed at top left; the second hole was for Buchanan, listed at top right, and the third hole was for Gore, listed under Bush on the left. Arrows linked the names with the proper hole, but some voters feared they had missed the arrows and punched the wrong hole.
"When ballots are placed in the slide for voting, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman are the second names on the ballot, but the third hole to punch," Florida Democratic Party Communications Director Bill Buck said in a statement.
"It was so hard to tell who and what you were voting for. I couldn't figure it out, and I have a doctorate," voter Eileen Klasfeld said.
Boca Raton resident Blake Smith incorrectly punched his ballot and had to ask for a second card.
"When I went to push the one for president, I pushed one and it seemed to be just below the office of vice president. It seemed like I had to push one for vice president, too. Then I saw I had accidentally voted twice," Smith said.
But Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Department of Elections, said the problem in Palm Beach County was exaggerated.
"I don't think they are confused. I think they left the polling place and became confused. The ballot is very straightforward. You follow the arrow, you punch the location. Then you have voted for who you intend to elect," said Roberts, a Republican appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore said her office received calls about the problem all day. "It has mostly been the Democratic Party calling to complain," LePore said.
Outside the Palm Beach elections office, about 50 outraged citizens carried signs protesting the ballots.
"It was an injustice. Thousands of people were confused," said 42-year-old Niso Mama. "We have to have another election in this county."
With the U.S. presidency hanging in the balance, Florida's critical recount of votes may not be completed until the end of business Thursday, the state's elections supervisor said today.
"We expect it to be done by tomorrow afternoon" around 5 p.m., Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Division of Elections, said in the state capital, Tallahassee.
Roberts said the only Florida ballots that were not counted in the election night tally of nearly 6 million votes were those cast by Florida registered voters living overseas who were required to have their ballots postmarked by Tuesday.
Those ballots might take up to 10 days to arrive and to be added to the vote count, officials have said. Bush led by fewer than 1,800 votes in the election night count.
Roberts said it was not known how many overseas ballots were cast but in 1996, about 2,300 were received. It possible that that the absentee ballots will be enough to sway the election, though.
Theresa LePore, elections supervisor in Palm Beach County, said her office alone was awaiting 515 ballots from absentee ballots sent overseas.
Recounts of votes in the presidential election began around South Florida today as election officials try to verify the razor-thin margin that will decide whether Al Gore or George W. Bush becomes president of the United States.
At last count, Bush led Gore by 1,784 votes in the unofficial Associated Press count with all Florida precincts reporting but an unknown number of absentee ballots yet to be counted. Some vote counts had the margin slightly higher or closer.
The vote totals showed Bush and Gore with roughly 49 percent apiece, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader with 2 percent.
The pressure on the recount was intense because Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, will decide the winner of the presidential election.
Shortly before 1 p.m. Wednesday, about a dozen vote counters gathered at a nondescript warehouse on the south side of the New River in Fort Lauderdale to recount the approximately 586,888 votes cast in Broward on Tuesday.
But first the counters held a brief prayer meeting as Broward deputies took up security posts and Democratic and Republican party officials, who would witness the recount, began gathering.
Officials with Elections Supervisor Jane Carroll's office said the recount should take three to four hours, and be completed around 5 p.m. It started at 1:35 p.m.
At a afternoon press conference, Carroll said the recount will include all three disputed races: the presidency, the U.S. House and Broward property appraiser contests.
"We've never had anything of this magnitude occur before," said Carroll, who is ending a 32-year career as head of the elections office.
Any changes to vote totals will be neglible, she predicted.
"I have never done a recount that has changed a race," she said, adding today's recount is the largest ever in Broward history.
Reports of a missing ballot box at Precinct 26C in Pompano Beach was not true, she said.
"It was not lost," Carroll said. The box, she added, was mistakenly left at the precinct. "It was found where it should have been" and intact.
"We can't prevent human mistakes."
Added Carroll: This was quite a (last) hoorah. I'd give us an A plus in handling the election last night."
In Palm Beach County, Elections Supervisor LePore expected to start her recount today, too, and have it completed in six or seven hours.
The recount begins amid a controversy over an oddly drawn ballot in Palm Beach County that confused some voters and may have caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
Hundreds of irate Palm Beach County voters, fearing they or their friends voted for Buchanan instead of Gore, besieged the county Election Department on Tuesday and Wednesday with complaints about the ballot.
Buchanan received 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, far more than neighboring areas such as Broward County, where he got 786, and Miami-Dade County, where he got 561. In precinct 162G, the Lakes of Delray area where Gore received one of his highest vote totals in all of Palm Beach County, a county high of 47 voters picked Buchanan, too.
In the case of the presidential race, Gore's name was the second one listed on the left side of the ballot with an arrow pointing to the third hole in the column. Legions of voters said they may have mistakenly punched the second hole in the column, which actually was designated for Buchanan, the Reform Party hopeful. Buchanan's name was on the opposite side of the page, with an arrow pointing to the second hole.
"People came out of there, and a lot of us don't know if we voted correctly," said Eleanor Merblum, 82, who voted at precinct 162E, a fire station on Hagen Ranch Road in West Delray. "If Gore doesn't win this district, you know something's wrong."
Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore, a Democrat, insisted any confusion was unintentional and defended the layout of the cluttered ballots as necessary to get all the presidential candidates on facing pages while making the type large enough for voters to read.
"I was trying to make the print bigger so elderly people in Palm Beach County can read it," said LePore.
.She also said if it was so confusing, someone should have pointed it out to her earlier. "We sent out sample ballots to all registered voters, and no one said a word," she said..
Victorious GOP Congressman Mark Foley said he had a Reform Party opponent who drew 2,651 votes, signaling support in Palm Beach County. "The allegations that people were voting in error because they were confused is nonsensical," he said..
But Palm Beach County Commissioner Bert Aaronson, who represents the West Boca and West Delray areas, disagreed. "I don't think we have 3,000 Nazis in Palm Beach County," he said..
Just what will happen as a result of the controversy is not clear. Attorneys representing the Democratic Party at the Palm Beach County election supervisor's office had made no request for action.
"There are a lot of rumors flying around because it was such a close election. But right now, it's just the recount process that everyone is looking at," said Mark Wallace, a lawyer for the Bush campaign who was there for the recount.
There were some other problems on Election Day, with a blank page where Senate candidates, including Bill Nelson and Bill McCollum, were supposed to be. Ballots on four machines in Lake Park did not have the page, LePore said. She said the machines were not used after the problem was found around 7:30 a.m.
The Gore-Buchanan confusion may prompt an inquiry by the Florida Attorney General's office.
"It's been presented to us to take a look at," said Paul Hancock, deputy attorney general in charge of the civil rights division. "The ballot really is confusing."
But state elections officials said they saw no problem with it.
"There's nothing wrong with the ballots in Palm Beach County," said Clay Roberts, director of the state division of elections. "The ballot is laid out according to state law and the voting system they have. It's absurd to think that Theresa LePore is in some conspiracy to take votes away from Al Gore and given them to Pat Buchanan. That's absurd."
Panicked voters started calling Democratic Party offices shortly after the polls opened at 7 a.m., saying they worried their intended votes for Gore went to Buchanan. Calls continued throughout the day, said Cathy Dubin, special assistant to the county's Democratic Party chairwoman.
By 11 a.m., the party dispersed fliers to its 260 poll watchers, warning voters to be careful when voting for Gore.
"They're getting ill, they don't know whether they voted right," said Dubin, adding calls were coming in from all over the county. "Every couple seconds someone is calling one of the phone banks, crying and saying, 'I don't know what to do.' It's just a mess."
Elected leaders also were inundated with calls from griping voters. Irving Slosberg, who was formally elected state representative for District 89 in Boca Raton on Tuesday, found a problem at a Delray Beach precinct, where two of 10 voting machines were shut off because they listed the wrong candidates for U.S. House. He alerted incumbent Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, who should have been listed with GOP challenger Morris Kent Thompson.
Slosberg and Wexler went to precinct 168A on South Oriole Boulevard around 11:30 a.m. and found the problem had been addressed. But Wexler said he also received calls from two other south county precincts about similar problems.
"When they realized it, they shut them down," Wexler said. "But that occurred after some people had voted."
More important to Wexler on Tuesday were the dozens of frenzied constituents who called his office to report their confusion when trying to vote for the Gore-Lieberman ticket.
"If me and Pat Buchanan are winning precincts in my district, there is something wrong," Wexler said.
At Temple Emeth, a heavily Democratic and elderly precinct in West Delray, more than 30 ballots were voided by 3 p.m., way more than the one or two voided in a typical election, clerk Ann Swift said.
In West Boynton, Gore workers greeted voters outside to warn them about the ballot.
"Some people are crying and crying over it," Joyce Isbitts said. "This is such a crime. It's outrageous."
The Associated Press and Staff Writers Brad Hahn, Steve Friess, Ardy Friedberg, Brad Hahn, Stella Chavez, Patty Pensa, Kathy Bushouse and Linda Kleindeinst contributed to this report.
Steve Friess can be reached at sfriess@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6636.
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