After ruling, county gathers staff, starts count
By Joel Engelhardt, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 17, 2000
After losing almost three days to a legal squabble that reached the Florida Supreme Court, the Palm Beach County manual count of 462,657 presidential ballots began in a rush at 7:14 p.m. Thursday.
The counting began with just 13 teams, rather than the anticipated 25, with plans to continue until midnight and start up again at 7 this morning with a full complement of workers. But at 1 a.m., 12 teams remained and were expected to stay another half-hour to finish their precincts.
Although 20 precincts were being counted Thursday night, the results from only one precinct were available as of 1 a.m. Bush's 32 votes in precinct 44C remained unchanged, while Gore received 39 votes, six more than the 33 from Saturday's second machine recount, according to media-pool reports.
But the controversies that have haunted this county's presidential election are sure to follow as the canvassing board wrestles with a new definition of what counts as a vote.
The board announced at the start of the count that it would change its 10-year-old standard to be consistent with Broward County, which also is hand-counting all of its presidential ballots. Republicans have challenged hand counts because, they say, every county applies a different standard.
Instead of counting any vote where even a single corner of the tiny perforated rectangle on the ballot, called a chad, is knocked out, Broward counts a vote only if two or more corners are punched.
Dimpled chads or chads with just one corner severed, however, will be scrutinized by the canvassing board to judge the voter's true intent, a standard prompted by Wednesday's ruling by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga.
"We can't just automatically exclude the dimpled ballots," as had been done by Palm Beach County before, canvassing board Chairman Charles Burton said.
Canvassing board members have previously said they expected the count to take six days, which would mean it would last through Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.
By midnight, the 13 teams had counted 16,600 ballots in 20 precincts, county spokeswoman Denise Cot said. That would put them on track -- with all 25 teams -- to finish in the expected six days.
First scheduled to start Tuesday, the recount had been on hold as the canvassing board waited for the Florida Supreme Court to referee a dispute over the legality of manual counts.
In an interim order, the court said Thursday that two circuit court rulings issued Wednesday -- one in Leon County and one in Palm Beach County -- allow the manual recounts to begin.
"At present this is binding legal authority on this issue and there is no legal impediment to the recounts continuing," the court said. Broward's recount began about 3 p.m. Wednesday.
The ruling said nothing about Secretary of State Katherine Harris' decision to accept no additional vote tallies. It drew predictably differing spins from party spokesmen.
Tucker Eskew, a spokesman for Republican candidate George W. Bush, minimized it as an "interim, status-quo ruling." But Democratic attorney Dennis Newman hailed it as a positive step.
"I don't think they would tell us to go ahead if it was useless. I think it's a very good sign," Newman said.
Eskew said he wasn't entirely displeased that the recount was beginning. "Perhaps tonight will be further evidence of these flaws. . . . It's to our advantage whenever those flaws come to light."
The high court's decision appeared on the court's Web site about 4:30 p.m. Within 15 minutes, Burton told the media gathered outside the county's Emergency Operations Center that the count would begin at 6 p.m.
County workers rushed to call in workers as Democrats and Republicans mobilized to observe the count. By 6 p.m., workers lined up to enter.
Each counting team consists of two county employees who handle the ballots and two observers, one Republican and one Democrat. They sort ballots by candidate, but if anyone objects, the card is put in a question-mark stack to be reviewed by the canvassing board.
Each party also gets five roving observers and two attorneys, for a total of seven extra observers.
Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore walked through the amphitheater-like room explaining the rules. Observers can't speak to workers, except to object. They can't eat at their seats.
Very quickly it became apparent that the workers and observers were getting along well. Some whispers were exchanged and one observer even pointed to snacks he would share.
When one team, joined by a roving GOP observer, had a question, Democratic lawyer Newman complained: "There's two Republican observers. What's up with that?" He thought roving observers were to stay along the side of the room.
As LePore delivered ballots to each counting team, hauling the sealed gray metal cases herself, the counting quietly began.
After all the teams had a precinct's ballots, the board discussed its new rules.
Hanging or dimpled chads automatically go to the question-mark pile, Burton told counters.
"There's no need for a debate" with the partisan observers, he told the counters. "If they say, `Questionable,' just put it in there and we'll take care of it later."
But Republican lawyer Mark Wallace objected. "We are precipitously adopting a standard on the very night we start counting," he said.
Burton said the canvassing board would examine all the questionable ballots "when we're sitting together and your chin is once again placed on my shoulder."
Newman, the Democratic lawyer, read the Texas code on counting ballots, which mentioned light being visible and dimpled chads showing intent. That's the law Bush signed in Texas, Newman emphasized.
Wallace started to make another objection, but Burton cut him off. "Mr. Wallace, can we avoid the political speeches with every objection?"
Wallace said, "That goes for both sides."
The board voted unanimously to adopt the Broward County standard.
During the day, complaints continued that Democratic County Commissioner Carol Roberts, a canvassing board member, shouldn't be part of the recount.
An attorney for Roberts, Richard Slawson, called "very suspicious" the timing of Republican accusations that Roberts tampered with ballots during Saturday's recount.
Mark Klimek, a mortgage banker who served as a Republican observer Saturday, said he saw ballot counters mishandling ballots so that partially punched chads fell off.
Klimek said he voiced concerns to Republican lawyers Saturday, filled out an affidavit Sunday and had it filed Monday in connection with the Bush campaign's federal suit seeking to block hand recounts. Neither Klimek nor the Bush campaign had copies of the affidavit.
Staff writers George Bennett and Matthew Doig and media pool reporters contributed to this story.
joel_engelhardt@pbpost.com
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Seasoned Democratic Army Hits the Shores of Florida
Partisans: Boston's Whouley leads troops in Florida to oversee recounts. The party operatives have one goal--whittle away at Bush's slim vote margin..
By ELIZABETH MEHREN and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, Times Staff Writers
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--This is the Democrats' last, best stand--their final hope to find non-tallied votes that could put Al Gore in the White House. Here in Broward County, a Democrat can hardly take a step without running into a party operative from somewhere else in the country.
To scrounge for every last vote, Gore has flooded Fort Lauderdale with tough, seasoned Democrats, the sort who are used to keeping wafflers in line and to count and recount votes until they know exactly what it will take to outdo their opponents. Many of the hired hands speak with a Boston brogue--no accident considering the man who was dispatched here to do the impossible for Gore one more time.
To win in Broward, Gore summoned his best on-the-ground political operative: Michael Whouley, the Boston political consultant who helped deliver Iowa and New Hampshire for him during the Democratic presidential primaries and who, on election night, vigilantly phoned the vice president at the last minute to head him off from delivering a concession speech to supporters in Nashville.
Whouley's loyal Massachusetts contingent is only the most visible in a small army of pros, all camped here for the biggest trove of all: virgin, non-retallied votes.
Broward is perhaps the strongest Gore county in the state, a seaside enclave where 68% of the 588,000 votes cast in the Nov. 7 election went for their man. Democrats feel that if they're going to pick up more votes for Gore anywhere, it is here in a resort town known best for its yearly invasion of party-obsessed college students.
For the last week, Whouley--a largely invisible presence here but whose name is reverently whispered by the Bostonians doing his bidding--has led a team of as many as 500 loyalists assigned to do whatever is necessary to whittle away at Bush's 300-vote statewide margin.
Whouley Dispatches Aides, Issues Orders
In the chaotic first day after the election, the first contingent of Whouley's Minutemen, many of whom have worked together in the political trenches for decades, began arriving in Florida. Whouley began issuing orders from Palm Beach, deciding each day where to send fresh troops.
"It was a visceral reaction for Whouley to get here, to get us all here immediately," said Boston lobbyist Paul Pezzula, one set of Whouley's eyes and ears here.
Whouley, 42, is a former ward boss whom Gore calls "the Brain." He whipped the vice president's faltering primary organizations into shape earlier this year and was reported to be the architect of Gore's successful town hall meetings.
In Broward, Whouley has tapped John Sasso, a longtime Boston political consultant, as his point man. Sasso, who was the top aide in Michael S. Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, was deliberately vague about the precise details of his assignment when interviewed briefly Thursday.
"Who knows what I'm doing here, exactly?" he said. "I'm helping with the recount."
Enough Boston lawyers have descended on Broward County that one Massachusetts lawyer guessed that they could field a quorum for a meeting of the Boston Bar Assn. Responding to a mass e-mail seeking help in Florida, some fanned out to Tallahassee to plot court strategy to keep the hand counts going. Others filed motions and fired off memos every time this state's Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, set up what Democrats saw as another roadblock to Gore's march to an electoral college victory.
Imported Democrats Go After Votes
But at the Broward County Emergency Operations Center, the Bostonians and other imported Democrats were doing what they had learned years ago at political conventions and primary nights: going for the votes.
Inside a hulking, custard-colored building that serves as an emergency shelter for hurricanes, from 50 to 100 tables were set up. With two county employees and two party observers--one Democrat, one Republican--at each table, the scene resembled a high-stakes bridge tournament.
The fiercest battles of the day were waged on the steaming hot blacktop of the parking lot in front of the recount center. Every hour or so, Democrats and Republicans dispatched lawyers into the thicket of waiting reporters to fire off accusations.
First they bickered over the chads found on the floor. Then the Democrats accused the Republicans of stall tactics. Then came the Republican lawsuit seeking an injunction against Broward's canvassing board. Then the two sides argued over the injunction's chances.
Suddenly, they all paused to gaze upward. High above, a small white plane towed a banner. It trailed a Republican message that played on the ultimatum delivered by the wicked witch in the "Wizard of Oz": "Surrender Gorethy."
In Broward, even some Republicans were impressed with the Democrats' ferocity. "They're definitely beating us at the spin game," said lawyer Shari McCartney, part of the Broward Republican legal team. "We're being made out to be the antithesis of the democratic process."
Not far away, in an abandoned Payless shoe store, vanloads of AFL-CIO staffers and Gore loyalists from New York, Chicago, Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco and elsewhere had disembarked to learn how to observe the ballot count.
"Our goal," said one lawyer as he patiently lectured his new charges, "is to preserve the Al Gore vote." The volunteers nodded. "It's very, very important that if you see any kind of mark--a scratch, a dent, a pinprick in Al Gore's column--that you challenge."
When someone then asked what they should do if they found a Bush ballot with an indent, the lawyer said: "Keep your lips sealed."
It was hardball that the Bostonians and other imported pros understood well.
But by day's end, after canvassing 90 of 604 precincts, Democrats had garnered just 21 net votes. Not a good sign, the hired hands knew.
Putting a voice to the frustration, Pezzula said: "Whatever we can get, we get. But it's like sipping swamp water out of a flavored straw. You're involved in the minutiae of the process, looking for any vote you can get. So you get one vote here and one vote there and hope they'll add up to make the difference."
Despite their numbers, despite their thick-skinned professionalism, the Bostonians and other imported Democrats are looking for any angle, any last coin under the carpet.
"We only need 301 votes," the Democratic lawyer reminded his volunteer observers, "to win this."
---
Times staff writer Geraldine Baum contributed to this story.
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Milwaukee Investigates Vote Fraud
By ANNE NAUJECK
.c The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE (Nov. 18) - Investigators looking into allegations of vote fraud have found inadequate staffing at some Milwaukee polling places and workers untrained in proper procedures, the district attorney said.
Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann's office is investigating hundreds of complaints of voting irregularities compiled by the state GOP after Vice President Al Gore's narrow victory over Republican Gov. George W. Bush in Wisconsin.
The reports include allegations of dozens of students voting more than once and Democrats offering homeless people cigarettes to vote.
A Marquette University student told authorities that an untrained poll worker arranged for her to register and vote twice, McCann said Friday. Another student who initially told reporters he voted four times recanted the story Wednesday.
McCann said some Milwaukee polling sites near college campuses were inadequately staffed to handle the large number of students who voted for the first time. Wisconsin law allows people to register at the polls on Election Day.
``The Democrats and Republicans were supposed to have gotten workers and they came up short,'' McCann said. ``It was a very high volume of voters for someone who got no instruction.''
Complaints of irregularities seem confined to Milwaukee County.
Green Bay's 48 polling sites had plenty of workers to handle the 70 percent of registered voters who showed up, while Eau Claire had more workers than it needed, officials said.
The alleged irregularities in Milwaukee have gotten national attention, with the Bush campaign leaving open the possibility of a Wisconsin recount depending on the outcome of the ballot recount in Florida.
Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist, a Democrat, blamed the city's Election Day problems on Republicans' failure to supply poll workers.
There are two Republicans and one Democrat on the Milwaukee Election Commission. Commission executive director Julietta Henry did not return calls to her office Friday.
AP-NY-11-18-00 0711EST
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November 18, 2000
Bush's Lead Stands at 926 After Overseas Count
By DAVID FIRESTONE
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ALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 18 — Gov. George W. Bush's lead in Florida grew steadily today as absentee ballots from overseas were opened and tallied. But his campaign was unable to claim the victory it had expected, as both sides awaited a hearing on Monday in the Florida Supreme Court.
Just as Republicans had predicted, Mr. Bush received an overwhelming share of the overseas ballots, which came in from military personnel and Floridians living abroad. A survey conducted by The Associated Press showed that in all 67 counties where the absentee voting was complete, Mr. Bush gained 1,376 votes while Vice President Al Gore gained 750 votes.
That left Mr. Bush with an overall Florida lead of 926 votes, more than triple the size of his lead before the overseas ballots were counted. All counties were required to report their absentee totals by noon today, and the two campaigns spent the morning squabbling over several hundred overseas ballots that were discarded because of postmark disputes.
An order on Friday afternoon from the state's highest court prohibited Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state, from certifying all votes in Florida, including the absentees, after the noon deadline today. At that point, Mr. Bush would probably have claimed Florida's 25 electors and the presidency for himself, putting the Democrats in the position of having to file a legal challenge to the election after it had been certified.
But the court ruled that Ms. Harris could not certify the election until after it had heard arguments on whether manual recounts in three Florida counties were legal. That hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday, and with the first briefs in the case due by 2 p.m. today, lawyers for both sides stayed up all night preparing their arguments.
At the same time, the hand counts in Broward and Palm Beach counties continued today, and the Miami- Dade County canvassing board decided today to begin counting its half- million ballots on Monday — a task that board members estimated could take two weeks, including weekends, with a Thanksgiving Day break. The board in Miami-Dade hopes to assemble 25 two-person teams of county employees to do the counts, but was having trouble finding enough counters.
But with Mr. Bush's lead having grown so large, the manual inspection of ballots will have to turn up a substantial number of previously uncounted votes for Mr. Gore if he has any hope of claiming victory here, even if he does win in the Supreme Court.
For example, in Broward County, a Democratic stronghold that is vital to Mr. Gore's hopes, the vice president had picked up only 48 more votes in hand counts of 25 percent of the county's precincts. If his gains should continue at that rate in the rest of the county, he would add only 218 votes through the manual recount, less than a quarter of what he will need to top Mr. Bush.
The Miami Herald reported this morning that a team of academic statisticians hired by the Democratic Party had projected that Mr. Gore would pick up only 500 votes in the three hand counts, not enough to counter the lead Mr. Bush has now built up in the absentee ballots.
Earlier in the week, Mr. Gore's forces said they might have a chance at an even split of the absentee votes. They predicted that many Floridians living in Israel would cast ballots for a ticket that included Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who is Jewish. But Republicans predicted all along that the overseas votes would break in their direction, just as they did for Senator Bob Dole in the presidential race of 1996.
Karen P. Hughes, the communications director for Mr. Bush, said today that the governor was "pleased" that his lead had increased with the absentee ballots. "We are hopeful that once the Florida Supreme Court has heard arguments in this case, the laws of Florida will prevail and the election will be certified," she said.
By this morning, when it became evident that Mr. Bush was winning nearly twice as many overseas votes as Mr. Gore, the Democrats could say only that the number was lower than the Republicans had expected. Each side accused the other of throwing out legitimate overseas ballots in county-by-county disputes over postmarks and proper markings of the ballots.
The Associated Press survey showed that while 2,203 overseas ballots were counted, 1,420 were discarded. Counties applied differing standards to the acceptance of the ballots, with some rejecting ballots — particularly those from the military — that had no postmarks, and others following the secretary of state's advice that they be accepted. Florida law requires postmarks on absentee ballots, but federal law says the military must mail the ballots of its personnel without postage.
Republicans charged that Democrats were trying to throw out as many overseas ballots as possible in the belief that doing so would reduce Mr. Bush's lead. Indeed, according to an analysis of The Associated Press survey, 60 percent of the ballots were thrown out in counties that were carried by Mr. Gore, and of those that remained, Mr. Gore held a slight edge. In counties carried by Mr. Bush, only 29 percent of the ballots were thrown out, and those that remained went for Mr. Bush by a better than 2-to-1 margin.
"We're distressed that it appears there's a statewide effort on behalf of Al Gore to discredit military votes," said Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush's campaign. "The Florida Democratic Party has been sending out instructions to their people in the counties on how to protest these votes."
But Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said the decisions on whether to accept or reject ballots were made by independently appointed elected officials, not by the campaigns.
"Both sides were out in the counties, but the final decision was up to the elected boards," she said. "It's surprising to me, after a week in which they got rejected in the Florida courts for challenging the authority of locally elected Florida election officials, that they are once again doing so this weekend."
The sprawling teams of local and national lawyers assembled by both sides stayed up all night in law offices around town, conducting legal research and using hastily rented computers to prepare their briefs for the filing deadline of this afternoon set by the Supreme Court.
Although the court will be hearing three consolidated cases, the principal issue at stake before the court is whether the secretary of state has the authority to reject manual recounts submitted after the usual seven-day period for certifying election results.
Last week the court permitted the hand counts to continue, but it has not yet taken a position on the central issue of the secretary of state's authority.
A trial judge ruled that Ms. Harris could not reject the hand counts arbitrarily, simply because they were late, but said she was allowed to reject them based on her own considered legal criteria.
Democrats, putting their last hope on the manual recounts, have been playing for time in the hope that Mr. Gore would overtake Mr. Bush in the hand counts. At that point, they said, Ms. Harris would be unable to reject a result that could overturn the election.
But Mr. Bush's sharp surge in the overseas ballots may eliminate that possibility.
Thus far the Florida Supreme Court, which is made up of seven justices appointed by Democratic governors, has issued two decisions considered favorable to Mr. Gore. But the hearing on Monday will be the first time in the case that they hear oral arguments, and they are well aware that the world will be watching every moment, and every question they raise in the hearing, to detect any hints of the ruling to come.
The court session will be televised live, and the court will also make the session available live on the Internet.
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Dems Upset by Bush Gains in Palm Beach County
By MARCY GORDON
.c The Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Nov. 18) - Democrats backing Al Gore had been asking Palm Beach County for a manual recount for days, but when the ballots started being tallied Republican George W. Bush was the one picking up votes.
With four of 531 precincts counted Friday, Bush had a net gain of four votes. The county had actually counted 88 precincts, but only released results from four. The recount resumed at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
``It's much too soon to project from those,'' said Mark White, a Democratic Party lawyer observing the recount.
Democratic observers complained their Republican counterparts tried to stall the recount with arbitrary ballot challenges.
``It was part of a deliberate process to delay this recount,'' White said.
Roughly 1,800 of the first 16,000 ballots recounted were set aside as questionable and will be examined by the county canvassing board. A judge has ruled the board can use its discretion to determine a voter's intent.
White said Republicans challenged one out of every five ballots Thursday night, then stopped making arbitrary challenges Friday.
Asked about White's accusation, GOP spokesman Tucker Eskew said, ``It would appear the Democrats are trying hard to determine a winner and a loser on an hour-by-hour basis. ... We will raise reasonable but firm objections.''
The methodical hand count of 462,350 ballots, requested by Gore's campaign, continued even after a circuit judge in Tallahassee ruled Friday that the secretary of state would be within her authority to refuse to accept hand-counted votes tallied after Nov 14.
The Florida Supreme Court later said Secretary of State Katherine Harris may not certify a winner of the state's election until further notice from the court. A hearing was set for Monday afternoon.
Palm Beach County has been at the center of the election dispute in part because critics said the design of its punch ballot was confusing. Some 19,000 ballots were never counted because voters chose more than one presidential candidate.
A circuit judge held a hearing Friday on several combined citizen lawsuits seeking a revote because of the ballot confusion. Judge Jorge Labarga said he'll issue a written ruling next week on whether the U.S. and Florida constitutions would permit a revote.
AP-NY-11-18-00 0848EST
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Seniors in South Florida Said to be Voting Twice
Amist all the turmoil created by the close contest for President in Florida, and with
Democrats pressing to have heavily Democratic counties recounted by hand, there
are reports surfacing of senior citizens living in Florida who voted there, but also
obtained and cast absentee ballots from the states they used to live in and in which
many still retain nominal residency and voter registration.
With hundreds of thousands of such voters in Florida, there is potential for dramatic
shifts in both vote totals in Florida, and/or in the states the retirees came from
originally.
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