Judge Rules on Florida Ballots
By KARIN MEADOWS
.c The Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A judge ruled Wednesday that Palm Beach County elections officials cannot arbitrarily toss out all ballots where the presidential choice was not completely punched.
Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that so-called ``dimpled chad'' - where the punchcard was not perforated, but was clearly indented - should be considered. But he said the county canvassing board may decide on individual ballots whether the dimple constitutes a vote.
``No vote is to be declared invalid or void if there was a clear intention of the voter,'' Labarga said after a 90-minute hearing in West Palm Beach.
Democrats sought the ruling hoping that thousands of previously rejected ballots could be counted.
``The judge granted exactly the relief which we sought,'' said Greg Barnhart, a lawyer for the Democrats. ``If they express a vote, the canvassing board needs to count that vote for whichever candidate it was cast. .... There was an inequity, and he corrected that.''
Earlier in the day, Republicans contended that Palm Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts poked, twisted and manipulated ballots during a Saturday hand recount of ballots from four precincts. They asked her to step down from the election canvassing board.
She said Wednesday she had been ``fair and impartial'' and rejected the Republican demand to recuse herself.
``As a member of this board, I have been and continue to be fair,'' she said.
Meanwhile, Labarga disclosed Wednesday that he served on the county GOP executive committee and was a former president of the Cuba-American Republican Club. He also said he had attended rallies for GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush, but said none of this would prevent him from fairly hearing election-related lawsuits.
Roberts approved several ballots displaying only minor indentations while refusing to count ballots with partially punched holes, according to a letter to the canvassing board from Republican lawyer James Higgins.
``The Republicans filed a written request that Ms. Roberts should recuse herself from the board. They are alleging she is biased,'' said County Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the three-member canvassing board.
He read a statement from Roberts Wednesday in which she said the ballots were recounted ``in full view of observers from both parties and cameras from all over the world,'' that all questions were decided by the three members of the board and that no complaints were voiced at the time.
The Palm Beach recount was stalled again Wednesday as board members waited for Labarga's ruling on which manner of indentations or partial punch-outs should count as votes.
Roberts voted against delaying the count again. Burton and Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore voted in favor of the delay.
``We decided that we would wait because we need clear direction on what to do,'' Burton said.
``On the one hand, we're trying to move forward,'' he said. ``On the other, it almost seems to be musical courts. We're going from the next courtroom to the next courtroom to the next courtroom.''
AP-NY-11-15-00 1210EST
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U.S. Appeals Court To Hear Recount Battle
Bush-Gore Election Dispute Also Goes To Florida's High Court
By ANNE GEARAN
.c The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Nov. 15) - A federal appeals court in Atlanta agreed Wednesday to consider arguments on George W. Bush's attempt to shut down Democratic-prompted manual recounts in Florida's contested presidential election.
The court issued its announcement at the same time Bush and presidential rival Al Gore were urging the Florida Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the disputed recounting in heavily Democratic counties.
There was no immediate word on when either court might hear the arguments as the dispute headed down an unpredictable two-pronged path - one or both of them possibly leading to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.
Bush holds a 300-vote lead in the state that stands to pick the next president, though the final tally hinges on an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots as well as the disputed recounts.
The federal case arises from Bush's attempt to shut down the manual recounts in selected counties. He lost in court in Miami earlier in the week.
All 12 judges in the circuit said they would consider arguments. They also decided to consider a separate but related case, this one filed by three voters who claim their rights are being violated because their counties are not recanvassing votes by hand.
The 11th Circuit issued a one-sentence order based on Bush's notice of intent to appeal.
Clerk Rob Phelps said only about half of the cases go to oral arguments so it's possible the judges could rule on the basis of written briefs alone.
The court set a 7 a.m. EST Thursday deadline for written arguments in the case of the voters who said they were being treated unfairly. No immediate deadline was set for Bush's case.
In the state courts, Bush filed papers seeking to join a lawsuit filed by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in her attempt to block the manual recounts.
A short while later, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Democrats would ask the state Supreme Court to take jurisdiction over a burgeoning number of election-related lawsuits. He said the papers to be filed would ask the state's top court to rule ''whether hand counts are appropriate under Florida law and if so what is the deadline for their completions.''
Christopher left open the possibility of further appeals beyond the state Supreme Court. ''We simply must, in order to protect the rights of the vice president in this matter, enable us to take steps that seem warranted,'' he said.
The legal maneuvering continued as officials in Broward County reversed course and decided to grant the Gore campaign its request for a full recount by hand. They planned to start Wednesday. It was not clear when the recounts would begin in Broward and Palm Beach counties, which together account for about 1 million votes. Both are Democratic strongholds, and at midday Republicans sought an emergency injunction to block the hand count in Broward County.
David Boies, a lawyer recently added to Gore's legal team, set out the types of issues that Democrats would like to see addressed.
''What kind of manual recount? When do you terminate it? What are the standards? Can you have a manual recount in some counties and not in another?''
It was not clear whether by his comment he was suggesting Democrats might seek to expand manual recounts beyond the four counties where they have requested them. They include Volusia, where it has been finished; Broward and Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade where officials voted Tuesday night not to proceed.
Bush made a one-page filing in the Florida state Supreme Court, saying he is entitled to become part of Harris' case because ''initial vote tabulation and the statutory recount tabulation resulted in a majority of votes being cast for George W. Bush.''
Also, Bush asked to intervene in a separate lawsuit filed by Palm Beach County elections supervisors against Harris.
In both cases, Bush wants his lawyers involved before any court hearings are scheduled.
A short time later, Florida's Democratic attorney general asked the state Supreme Court to combine the two suits and act quickly to resolve them.
''A consolidated resolution of these issues would provide finality,'' Attorney General Bob Butterworth said.
The Florida Supreme Court has seven members, all chosen by Democratic governors.
In yet another case, Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga scheduled a hearing for Friday on demands by some voters to hold a new election in Palm Beach County. The judge said he would consider the constitutionality of a ''revote,'' but he seemed doubtful. ''It seems to be like the only time you can have another election is in 2004,'' he said.
Earlier, he said the Palm Beach canvassing board could decide on individual ballots whether a ''dimple'' rather than full perforation constitutes a vote.
''No vote is to be declared invalid or void if there was a clear intention of the voter,'' Labarga said after a 90-minute hearing.
Early in the day, Harris asked the state's top court to delay any hand recounting of ballots and to consolidate lawsuits in the chaotic vote count that has left the presidential election hanging in the balance for more than a week.
Harris a day 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 showed Republican Gov. Bush ahead of Democrat Gore by 300 votes, an outcome hotly contested by Democratic lawyers. Still to be tallied are overseas ballots due by midnight Friday.
Harris also asked that the flurry of legal actions around the state be transferred to the local circuit court in Tallahassee, the state capital. She wants any new suits filed in the same court, too.
''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.
In other developments:
-Volusia County had completed a full manual recount. Volusia County has a challenge pending, nonetheless, of a state judge's ruling that said counties must abide by the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline. Their case is expected to pass immediately from a midlevel state appeals court to the state Supreme Court. In the end, the matter could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
-Miami-Dade's canvassing board voted 2-1 Tuesday night against a full manual count after a hand count of three precincts awarded Gore a net gain of six votes. Officials there sent Harris a letter asking her to include the new count.
-In Gadsden County west of Tallahassee, the canvassing board agreed to let both parties inspect disputed ballots. State Attorney Willie Meggs, the top prosecutor in the region and a Democrat, told The New York Times that the county shouldn't have recounted by hand more than 2,000 ballots that had been rejected by voting machines. The county's canvassing board - mostly Democratic but with a Republican chairman - recounted those ballots and Gore ended up with a gain of 170.
-Republicans in Palm Beach County said board member Carol Roberts poked and twisted ballots during a Saturday hand recount of four precincts and should step down. She said she had been ''fair and impartial'' and would not step aside.
In general, Democrats said a ruling by a state judge regarding the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline gave them new legal options because Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said counties still recounting ballots by hand at the request of Gore campaign's may be able to make a case for filing those totals late.
If Harris rejects those requests, Democrats could sue.
''If the secretary of state arbitrarily refuses to accept the amended returns based on the recount and violates what this court has ruled ... then we will be back in court,'' said Boies.
AP-NY-11-15-00 1445EST
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Legal Tangle Delays Palm Beach Recount
By Marianne Armshaw
Reuters
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., (Nov. 15) - Mired in legal questions, Florida's Palm Beach County delayed starting a hand recount Wednesday of more than 460,000 votes which could decide the winner of the key state in the U.S. presidential election.
But the county's election panel said it would meet a 2 p.m. deadline set by the state's top election official, Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, for counties wanting to undertake a manual recount to supply her with reasons for doing so.
The Canvassing Board, which supervises elections at the county level, voted in the early morning to suspend a recount which had been due to start at 7 a.m. in the confines of a hurricane-proof building that serves as the county's emergency operations center.
The panel made its decision pending a ruling from a state judge on exactly which ballots should count as votes in a manual recount.
Then, as a fresh legal hurdle arose in the form of Harris asking the state Supreme Court to suspend manual recounts, the panel voted to carry on waiting.
The county was caught in the middle of political and legal maneuvering focused on the issue of manual recounting of votes from the Nov. 7 election. Hand counting could erode Republican George W. Bush's razor-thin lead over Democrat Al Gore in the state and cost him the White House.
DIMPLE RULING NOT ENOUGH TO START COUNT
The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, three obscure bureaucrats propelled into the national spotlight by America's post-election storm, voted 2-1 to keep holding off the county's manual recount pending an advisory opinion from the state Supreme Court on the legality of hand counts.
Earlier, the panel also voted 2-1 to delay the hand count pending a ruling from state judge Jorge Labarga on whether ballots marked with indentations, or dimples, should be counted as votes. Those ballots would not have registered in a machine count.
Labarga ruled around mid-day, saying it was up to the Canvassing Board to decide whether ballots with indentations rather than holes fully or partially punched through should count as votes.
But the Palm Beach recount was still on hold. Counters were told to stay on site pending it getting started.
Gore's camp, seeking to chase down any votes that might have been missed by machines, has sought manual recounts in Palm Beach County and a handful of other Florida counties. Republicans see the process as an unfair attempt by Democrats to keep counting until the figures suit them.
Judge Charles Burton of the Palm Beach Canvassing Board said the board would meet Harris' deadline for counties wanting to undertake a manual recount to present their case to her. Harris would then decide if the official state tally, which gives a lead of 300 votes to Bush over Gore, should be amended.
''We intend to comply with the 2 p.m. deadline,'' he said.
Whichever candidate wins in Florida will garner its 25 electoral college votes needed to take the White House.
LONG WAIT FOR COUNTERS
Vote counters, observers and reporters began arriving before dawn at the building in a suburb of West Palm Beach where the five-day count in Palm Beach County was to take place, only to stand down when proceedings were halted.
A Republican motion for a Democrat on the panel who consistently has voted for the manual recount to press ahead, Carol Roberts, to be removed, failed when the board decided not to take any action on the matter.
Heavily Democratic Palm Beach County is one of four Florida counties where Democrats asked for a manual recount.
County election officials filed the results of a third machine count with state officials in West Palm Beach to meet a Tuesday afternoon deadline by Harris.
The board sent as its certified numbers 152,951 votes for Bush and 269,732 votes for Gore. This was a net gain for Gore of 39 votes over the second machine count and 682 votes over the first machine count.
In Palm Beach County the disputed election vote was further complicated by the issue of a so-called ''butterfly'' ballot sheet that laid out candidates' names on two halves of a sheet of paper rather than all down one side of the page.
Democrats and their supporters say thousands of votes that were meant for Gore were invalidated because of confusing ballot sheets that led some people to vote mistakenly for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan and others to double-punch their ballot sheets.
Although the counting itself was to take place inside the county emergency center, the Canvassing Board held meetings on Wednesday outside in Florida's fall warmth -- in keeping with the state's ''Sunshine law'' that calls for public proceedings to be fully open to the public.
Outside the building, two protesters, 42-year county residents Barbara and Ronald Kearney, waved a sign reading ''Grandparents for Bush.''
REUTERS Reut13:31 11-15-00
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Another County Votes To Recount Election Votes
By Michael Connor
Reuters
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Nov. 15) - Florida's Broward County on Wednesday voted to hold a recount of more than half-a-million votes cast there in the controversy-mired U.S. presidential election.
The county heavily favored Democrat Al Gore in the initial count from the Nov. 7 national election and a recount was believed likely to add votes to his total.
He currently lags Republican George W. Bush by just 300 votes in Florida, whose 25 electoral college votes hold the key to the White House.
At a public meeting on Wednesday morning, the local election panel voted 2-1 for a recount, reversing an earlier decision.
It was still discussing the logistics of organizing the recount, such as where to hold it and how to staff it.
Any results from a recount would still be subject to a review by Florida's top election official to decide if the official tally should be amended as a deadline for reporting returns passed on Tuesday afternoon.
The Broward County results currently logged in the official state tally give Gore 386,518 votes and Bush 177,279.
The three-person Canvassing Board had earlier decided against a recount but Judge Robert Lee said he had changed his mind. He said he was swayed by the legal interpretation of Florida election law from state attorney general Bob Butterworth, a Democrat.
"His opinion was well-reasoned and researched, something lacking in the secretary's," Lee said, referring to Florida's top election official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who opposed any recount.
However, Broward, home to 1.5 million people on south Florida's Atlantic Coast, must still explain to Harris by 2 P.M EDT (1900 GMT) Wednesday why a recount was justified.
Harris, a prominent Republican, had set a Tuesday deadline in line with Florida law for counties to submit their final recount.
CHALLENGE FROM DEMOCRATS
A state judge in Tallahassee, responding to a challenge from Democrats, issued a clarifying ruling that upheld the deadline as proper under law but said Harris also had "the discretion" to examine the case of any counties whose returns came in later and possibly amend tallies.
Republicans spoke against reopening the recount and said after the vote they were considering court action to block it.
Shari McCartney, a lawyer for the Broward County Republicans, said the entire dispute in the county might be overtaken by a ruling from the Florida Supreme Court. The top court in Florida was scheduled to hear arguments on the elections dispute later Wednesday.
The three members of the Broward County Elections Canvassing Board, including Republican Elections Supervisor Jane Carroll, who had voted against the full hand recount, were discussing logistics of the operation that may involve 100 teams of tabulators sorting through hundreds of thousands of punched ballots the size of business envelopes.
They were also discussing setting a target for finishing the recount, possibly working 10 hours a day and finishing on Monday.
Republicans complained that hand recounts are significantly less reliable than machine tabulations and leave too much to the discretion of individual counters.
But Suzanne Gunzburger, a Democrat and the most forceful proponent of a full manual recount in Broward, said the hand recount was needed to ensure that every vote is counted and to rectify errors uncovered in a sample hand recount.
"The machines did not properly count all the properly voted ballots. It was tabulation errors by the machines, not voter error," Gunzburger said.
In the sampling recount of three of the county's more than 600 voting precincts, yielded a net gain of four votes for Gore and no change for Bush.
Reuters 12:21 11-15-00
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Uncounted ballots may add up to 180,000
By Gwyneth K. Shaw, Jim Leusner and Sean Holton
of the Sentinel Staff
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on November 15, 2000
Up to 180,000 ballots were cast but did not count in Florida`s tightest presidential race ever because of human error, mechanical glitches and voters who abstained from that race or deliberately sabotaged their ballots in protest, voting data show.
As lawyers stoked court battles across the state over George W. Bush`s apparent winning margin of just 300 votes, this far larger number emerged in a survey by the Orlando Sentinel of results from all 67 counties. The survey includes certified totals from all but the three counties where tallies were still in dispute Tuesday. The numbers show:
» Nearly 3 percent of the 6.1 million Florida voters who cast valid ballots Nov. 7 either chose not to vote for president or did not have that presidential vote counted because of a mistake.
» Counties with punch-card systems -- such as Miami-Dade and Palm Beach -- had the highest percentage of uncounted ballots.
» Counties carried by Democrat Al Gore accounted for 94,389 of these spoiled or incomplete ballots, while counties won by Republican Bush accounted for 85,466.
The difference between ballots cast and votes recorded would probably have gone unnoticed in a normal year -- it`s close to Florida`s 2.5 percent shortfall in 1996 and 2.3 percent shortfall in 1992. But it comes as another bitter spoonful of electoral reality in a state where the mantra for the past eight days has been "every vote counts."
"People should not have to guess if their vote counts," said Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho.
It`s impossible to say how many of the uncounted or spoiled ballots this year were the result of mistakes and how many were by voter choice. Experts said two less-than-compelling candidates at the top of the ticket may have meant more presidential ballots left deliberately blank.
But some trends in the Sentinel survey suggest otherwise. For instance, the overall shortfall rate was nearly five times higher in the 43 counties where ballots are tabulated centrally rather than in local precincts.
In places such as Orange County, where the vote-tallying machines are set up in precincts, flawed ballots are immediately kicked back to voters -- and they get a chance to fill out a new one. But when marked or punched ballots are shipped off to a central location for tallying, they can`t be re-done.
Patterns also emerged depending on the type of voting machine used: The 26 counties with punch-card systems consistently had bigger "undervotes" -- meaning no choice was recorded in presidential races. That suggested that Palm Beach County was not the only place bedeviled by the infamous "chad" that clings to a ballot and keeps it from being read. Other punch-card counties with notable undervotes were Collier, Hillsborough, Marion and Sarasota.
On the other hand, a high "overvote" -- meaning more than one candidate was marked for president -- was more common in the 16 counties where ballots are marked with felt-tip pens and counted centrally. A good example was Lake County, with 3,114 overvoted ballots, many blamed on voters who filled in the space next to the candidate`s name and also wrote the candidate`s name as a write-in.
Another big problem -- noted particularly by smaller counties -- was the sheer number of presidential candidates on this year`s ballot. Florida`s voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1998 making it easier for independent and minority parties to get on the ballot, accounting for this year`s 10 candidates. Election supervisors across the state blamed the increase in choices -- there were four candidates in 1996 -- for the spike in voter confusion.
Denny Henderson, who runs elections in Gadsden County -- which had the highest percentage of spoiled or blank ballots, at 12 percent -- said there was no other explanation for the problems.
The number of candidates forced some supervisors to get creative. The much-debated "butterfly" ballot used in Palm Beach County was an effort by supervisor Theresa LePore to make the candidates` names easier for senior citizens to read by running them in larger type on two facing pages.
In Duval and DeSoto counties, voters had two nonfacing pages of presidential candidates to contend with. Especially in Duval -- where nearly 22,000 people voted for more than one person -- it appears that many voted for a candidate on each page.
Robert Phillips, director of operations in Duval, said his office did everything possible to make the situation clear to voters, including large-type directions on each page.
"We kind of feel like everything on the ballot was laid out properly, and some people just didn`t pay attention to the directions," Phillips said.
The spoiled ballots in Duval accounted for the vast majority of the county`s 9.2 percent shortfall -- 26,909 votes.
Officials such as Ron Turner, who runs elections in DeSoto County, say some of the blame rests with the voters, who had a chance to examine a sample ballot before Election Day. Even with all the candidates, he said, Republicans and Democrats remain in the first and second positions on the ballot, and people should know whom they`re voting for before they walk into the precinct.
"My personal opinion is, people need to get a grip," he said.
Posted Nov 14 2000 10:30PM
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Fla. County's Recount Criticized
By DARA KAM
.c The Associated Press
QUINCY, Fla. (AP) - A top prosecutor said a rural north Florida county should not have recounted by hand more than 2,000 presidential ballots that had been rejected by voting machines.
The day after the Nov. 7 election, Gadsden County's mostly Democratic canvassing board went into a back room and recounted all the votes machines had rejected. Members of the public watched through a window.
When they were finished, Vice President Al Gore had 170 more votes than before the recount. Gadsden County is heavily Democratic, with 22,340 registered Democrats compared to only 2,633 Republicans.
``Nobody has done anything wrong, except probably the press,'' said lame duck Gadsden County Supervisor of Elections Denny Hutchinson, who stepped down from the canvassing board before last week's recount. ``You all want to keep things stirred up and feast on it.''
Hutchinson, 63, who was knocked out of his job in the September primary, said he resigned from the board because of a health concern.
Judge Richard L. Hood and Gadsden County Commissioners Ed Dixon and Sterling Watson, who replaced Hutchinson, are the present canvassing board members. All are Democrats.
Republicans say the county officials had no right to examine rejected ballots and add many of them to Gore's column in the tight presidential race between Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
State Attorney Willie Meggs, the region's top prosecutor and a Democrat, said he had never heard of ballots being counted that way and told The New York Times the recounted ballots were invalid.
``You don't give a vote to someone whose ballot was not counted,'' Meggs said.
Gadsden County's canvassing board agreed to let both parties inspect the disputed ballots Wednesday.
Earlier, Hood, the Republican chairman of the canvassing board, defended the examination and counting of the rejected ballots.
``As far as I was concerned, the election was fair,'' Hood told the Times.
Hutchinson, a Democrat, said he was opposed to counting the rejected ballots because so many of them were in bad shape.
Many were marked up with pencil marks, crossed-out selections and multiple selections.
``Ballots like this didn't have any business being counted,'' Hutchinson told the newspaper.
AP-NY-11-15-00 1513EST
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