Dems Call Fla. Voters About Ballots
I received this via email. I sent it to the SD Union-Tribune news desk asking for confirmation that it is bona fide. No response yet. Is this old news?...jj
Dems Call Fla. Voters About Ballots
By John Solomon
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Nov. 10, 2000; 9:39 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON –– Faced with a cliffhanger election, the Democratic
Party
directed a telemarketing firm on Election Night to begin calling
thousands of
voters in Palm Beach, Fla., to raise questions about a disputed ballot
and
urge them to contact local election officials.
The Democratic National Committee paid Texas-based TeleQuest to make the
calls Tuesday night – while polls were still open – alerting voters
in the
heavily Democratic enclave in Florida of possible confusion with the
ballots
they cast.
"Some voters have encountered a problem today with punch card ballots in
Palm
Beach County," the script for the call said. "These voters have said
that
they believe that they accidentally punched the wrong hole for the
incorrect
candidate."
"If you have already voted and think you may have punched the wrong hole
for
the incorrect candidate, you should return to the polls and request that
the
election officials write down your name so that this problem can be
fixed,"
the script said.
The firm took the names and numbers of voters who said they may have
cast
an
errant ballot, providing the Democratic Party a list of about 2,400
voters in
the county who thought they may have misvoted.
If voters were about to go to the polls, the script called for the
caller
to
instruct them to "be sure to punch Number 5 for Gore-Lieberman" and "do
NOT
punch any other number as you might end up voting for someone else by
mistake."
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jenny Backus said the party
had
been making traditional get-out-the-vote calls all over the country
Tuesday,
but shifted gears in Palm Beach after hearing local news reports about
possible voter confusion.
"Once we were informed by local news accounts of the magnitude of the
problem
with confusion about the ballot, we shifted our scripts to make sure
that
people who were voting were aware of the questions and confusion around
the
ballot," she said.
The maneuver indicates that long before Americans awoke to the reality
of
the
Florida ballot dispute, Democrats were already mobilizing voters there.
The
concern has focused on Palm Beach, where 19,000 ballots were
disqualified
and
hundreds of voters have said they mistakenly voted for Patrick Buchanan
while
trying to vote for Gore.
Within hours of the phone campaign, hundreds of Democratic voters had
called
election officials in Palm Beach to complain they may have been confused
by
the ballot and voted for the wrong candidate.
Some Palm Beach County voters have filed lawsuits seeking a new vote.
The outcome of the dispute is key because George W. Bush is leading Gore
by a
mere 327 votes after a statewide recount. The winner of Florida will lay
claim to the electoral votes needed to become the nation's 43rd
president.
The calls indicate that Democrats were concerned about Palm Beach
problems
even before they knew Florida's vote would end in a razor-thin margin,
said
American University political science professor Candice Nelson.
"To the extent there have been accusations that Democrats didn't cry
foul
until they realized Wednesday that Bush may have won, this cuts the
other
way," she said.
Nelson and other political and legal experts said the calls were
perfectly
legal but could have contributed to what appeared to most Americans to
be
a
spontaneous explosion of concern in Florida the morning after the
election.
"I think those kinds of calls make perfect sense," Nelson said. "In
terms
of
people getting riled up, it would be a tactic that might energize voters
who
might otherwise not have realized they may have mistakenly voted for the
wrong candidate."
One Florida Democrat said Republicans would take similar action had the
tables been turned.
"They'd be fighting this thing tooth and nail for months and months,"
said
Wayne Brewer, 45, of Juneau, Fla.
"They knew they ... lost, and now they want to win on an assumption," he
said, speaking outside the government center in West Palm Beach.
Wade Scott, an account manager with TeleQuest, said Democratic Party
officials contacted his company shortly before 6 p.m. EST Tuesday to
make
the
calls.
With only an hour to go before Florida polls closed, his company
mobilized
all of its telemarketers to make some 5,000 calls in less than 45
minutes,
Scott said.
"It was a very short burst of calling for our industry," Scott said. He
said
only about 100 of the voters in Palm Beach it contacted hadn't voted,
and
about 2,400 felt they may have made a mistake on the ballot.
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press |
