Fla. Secretary of State Seeks Delay
By ANNE GEARAN
.c The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida's secretary of state asked the state's top court Wednesday to delay any hand counting of ballots and consolidate lawsuits in the chaotic vote count that has left the presidential election hanging in the balance for more than a week.
Katherine Harris, a Republican, filed the petition with the state Supreme Court as officials in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County gathered to begin a recount that she has opposed. She earlier gave all counties until 2 p.m. EST Wednesday to justify to her why they should be allowed to conduct further counting past a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline.
After the deadline, the state said the returns gave the election - and perhaps the White House - to Republican Gov. George W. Bush by 300 votes, an outcome hotly contested by Democratic lawyers who have been stepping up their legal fight.
In her petition, Harris said local canvassing boards should stop any effort to hand count ballots ``pending resolution as to whether any basis exists to modify the certified results after the statutory deadline for submission of returns.''
She also asked that the flurry of legal actions around the state be transferred to a court in Tallahassee, the state capital.
``Without question, this court must make it clear that the election of the president and vice president is not a matter of local pleasure,'' the petition said. ``It is, at the least, a statewide matter of concern. This court must assume control over this litigation to preserve its ability to establish standards and to protect the voters of the state.''
AP-NY-11-15-00 0814EST
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States Of Confusion
Close Calls In Wisconsin, New Mexico, Iowa And Oregon
Could More Recounts Be On The Way?
MADISON, Wisconsin, Nov. 14, 2000
CBS
CBS The Badger State is bracing for the spread of recount fever, reports CBS News Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman. With the official tallies still trickling in, the unofficial count has this state going for Gore by just 6,000 votes.
"We're definitely under the microscope," says Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the Wisconsin Elections Board.
No one is watching more closely than state Republicans.
"We're ready to go," says Rod Hise, executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party. "We've been working very, very hard over the last four or five days to put together an organization that can execute a recount. And whatever marching orders we get from Austin, we're ready to execute."
Republicans contend that the vote in the Milwaukee area was tainted by Democratic bribes of cigarettes to homeless voters and a college prank that saw some students voting more than once, including one registered as Mickey Mouse.
"It's highly unlikely that there's anything remotely approaching 6,000 votes in question, and so a recount would probably be more symbolic than real," says Don Kettl, of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin.
The posturing is all part of the partisan chess game that has seized the nation.
"It's really a warning about the possibility of spreading the recount fever, spreading the court challenges and delivering a shot across the Gore campaign's bow that something has got to stop soon or the situation will get much worse very fast," says Kettl.
If Florida goes for Gore, recount fever could spread beyond Wisconsin to Iowa, Oregon and New Mexico where the vice president holds narrow leads. With 30 electoral votes at stake, Bush would need the biggest three to win the Electoral College and the presidency.
And that would be a very long shot, which means despite the saber rattling up here, the outcome of this election really is in the hands of the people down in the Sunshine State.
Copyright 2000, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved.
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ELECTION 2000, Day 9
Navy flying home
3,000 lost ballots
Ship captain: 'A majority of the pilots
aboard are registered voters in Florida'
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© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
At least one major instance of missing overseas military ballots -- involving some 3,000 absentee votes -- appears to be on its way to resolution.
WorldNetDaily reported yesterday that a source on the USS Tarawa, a U.S. Navy destroyer near Yemen, said that "thousands" of absentee ballots were languishing onboard.
The Navy has now confirmed bundles of overseas ballots left behind -- not on one, but three ships in the Persian Gulf region. According to a New York Post account, Cmdr. Greg Smith, a Navy spokesman, said the ballots of some 3,000 sailors and Marines on the USS Tarawa, USS Deleuth and USS Anchorage would be flown back to the United States "expeditiously."
Before the discovery of missing Navy ballots, Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon and Navy Lt. Dave Gai had both criticized WorldNetDaily -- Bacon publicly at a press briefing -- for its reporting on this issue. Bacon referred to WND's initial story as "ludicrous" for reporting that some servicemen and women suspect the Clinton administration may have somehow purposely delayed sending absentee ballots to military personnel overseas because most historically vote Republican. Gai, the Pentagon spokesman quoted in two of WND's stories, had previously said he was "not aware of any large-scale problems." Nevertheless, the newssite's reports caught the attention of Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., who is now calling for a congressional investigation into the issue.
In yesterday's WND report, Oregonian Judy Krutsinger, whose brother-in-law is stationed onboard the Tarawa, said that although the Pentagon had reportedly contacted Florida election officials to inform them that mail from all area warships had been picked up Nov. 7, her relative aboard the Tarawa denied that.
"We e-mailed [him] aboard ship about that. ... [H]e e-mailed back saying [the mailbags] are still onboard," Krutsinger told WorldNetDaily. She said the mail was contained in orange bags on 17 pallets and that "ballots were not separated from regular mail, as they should have been."
A United Press International account reported comments from a Marine Corps captain from the Tarawa who helped evacuate the dead and injured from the USS Cole after it was attacked by terrorists on Oct. 12.
Capt. Van P. Brinson, who did not receive his absentee ballot, wrote in a Nov. 8 e-mail: "I cannot speak for the remainder of the crew of the Tarawa, but I do know that the majority of the Marines and sailors that I have spoken with are in the same boat. What is distressing about the situation," he added, "is that a majority of the pilots aboard are registered voters in Florida."
Florida law requires that overseas ballots be postmarked by Election Day, and Friday midnight is the deadline for the state's 67 counties to receive them.
Now that the large cache of ballots has been found, "all we're trying to do is see if there's a way to get the mail there," Smith said in the Post story.
Smith explained that the reason the shipboard mail was forgotten was because the three West Coast-based ships were preoccupied assisting the stricken Cole after it was bombed last month.
Once someone realized that the mail contained time-sensitive ballots -- whose importance is now increased dramatically because of the historically close race -- the Navy agreed to fly the ballots to the U.S. post haste.
Meanwhile, stateside, the U.S. Postal Service says it is fast-tracking military overseas ballots destined for Florida -- promising to get them to the 67 county election departments the same day they arrive in the U.S., the Post reported.
The ballots are being processed by postal employees at the Air Mail Center near Miami International Airport, according to an Associated Press report, where all overseas military mail sent to the United States arrives.
Ballots destined for South Florida counties are being driven to the appropriate post offices for same-day delivery, while those earmarked for north and central Florida counties are flown to regional mail centers, then forwarded to the local post office for delivery to election officials.
According to the AP story, as of Monday the postal service had delivered 446 military overseas ballots to Florida since Nov. 8. An unofficial Associated Press survey of 64 of Florida's 67 election supervisors showed that more than 19,300 overseas ballots had been mailed from the state. While over 10,000 had been returned -- and most of those already counted -- officials could not say how many ballots were still outstanding.
Many service personnel and their families have complained to WorldNetDaily that their ballots were sent to them by fourth class "bulk mail" -- which can delay delivery by a month or more -- instead of first class. Many others claim they never received their ballots at all.
For those stationed on the Cole, Deleuth and Anchorage, at least, their votes seem to be on their way home.
"We understand the urgency of this situation and realize that the entire presidential election could rest on these ballots," said postal service spokeswoman Enola C. Rice yesterday, said the AP report.
Read Joseph Farah's column today, "Those missing military ballots."
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Republican lawyers say to beware of falling chads
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Visit our Election 2000 page
for daily election news and analysis
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Chads were everywhere during Saturday's marathon vote recount, and it's not the night janitor who is upset; it's Republican lawyers. Top Stories
• Bush clings to 300-vote lead
• Gore camp seeks to calm Democrats on Capitol Hill
• Accuracy, finality are priorities of court order
• China prepares for war with U.S. over Taiwan
• U.S. rebukes Germany
"Chads were seen on the floor during the process," Benjamin Ginsberg, general counsel for the Bush campaign, wrote this week to Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore. "This produces further evidence that mishandling of the ballots, not voter intent, potentially was yielding new votes."
The question of whom the voter picked, Al Gore or George W. Bush, is of paramount concern, especially when a Bush vote might be nullified by an accidentally removed chad for Mr. Gore.
Enough misplaced chads — the tiny specks of paper punched out of ballots during voting — would imperil Mr. Bush's narrow, 300-vote certified lead in the state.
"There were chads all over the place," said Reeve Bright, an attorney for the county's Republican Party. "The more people who handle them, the more that fall off. I told a computer operator that we ought to bag them all up and sell them on the Internet."
Mark Wallace, the lead Republican attorney in the recount process, yesterday attacked the hand count of 462,000 ballots set to begin this morning in Palm Beach County, hinting that the ballots, which are stored in metal cases, could suffer more damage.
"What will you do to preserve the sanctity of those ballots?" Mr. Wallace asked county canvassing board Chairman Charles Burton during an afternoon meeting.
"The same thing we've always done," Mr. Burton said tersely.
During Saturday's 12-hour hand count of 4,600 votes, stacks of ballots were lined up on three long tables in a small conference room where 17 elections workers, observers and the three-member canvassing board gathered to find out if a total recount was needed.
Ballots were stacked, they were held, they were waved about and they were grabbed.
"The chads have been in every room there has been a recount," Mr. Wallace said. "And to boil this down to which small, paper rectangle is punched out is arcane."
"What we had is three Democrats holding up the card, flipping it around and passing it around. All kinds of people touched these so all kinds of things were happening to them."
A lawyer from Broward County, who asked not to be named, said that Bush attorneys are taking affidavits from witnesses to the mishandling of the ballots.
Paper ballots in Florida and elsewhere have always yielded some double votes, in which someone casts a vote by punching out a chad next to one candidate, then has a change of heart and punches the chad on another.
It nullifies the ballot, although if a voter does such a thing, he can get up to three more ballots.
The voting booth instructions also address the power of chad: "Pull off any partially punched [chads] that might be hanging."
One week after the election, there are still chads all over the floor in the elections office at the Governmental Center here. In the recount room, though, someone has been busy with a sweeper.
A county spokeswoman yesterday denied Mr. Ginsberg's accusation of free-flowing chads.
"I was in there, and I don't recall seeing any," said Denise Cote. "It's not as if they fall off like rain."
But most voting clerks can tell tales of those loose chads, said Bonnie Re, a Boca Raton woman.
"Those little things come off so easily," she said. "I can understand how someone might have to get a new ballot, which they do all the time. But that's all they need to do."
More than 19,000 voters in this county had their votes set aside because of errors, cases in which either no candidate was selected or two were selected. It is hardly uncommon. In 1996, 17,000 ballots were disqualified here.
In 1998, 18 percent of state counties used punch cards like Palm Beach County's to register votes. The most popular method is the optical scan, used by 40 percent of counties nationwide, including many in Florida.
During Mary Morgan's 20 years as an elections supervisor in Collier County on the state's west coast, she endured several manual recounts and also incurred charges of flimsy chads that could sway an election outcome.
"If we were going to do a manual, I would get a vacuum cleaner to make sure there was no appearance of falling chads," said Miss Morgan, who retired in June.
"The more times they are touched, the more chads that come off," she said.
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