DAY 13: America Held Hostage
'Mental giants' charged with stealing Palm Beach
County voting booth
Reuters
Web-posted: 4:44 p.m. Nov. 17, 2000
WEST PALM BEACH - Two Florida men who posted an Internet
advertisement to sell a Palm Beach County voting booth,
complete with the infamous butterfly ballot booklet, were jailed
on stolen property charges, police said Friday.
"These guys were not mental giants," said Michael Washam,
special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement's (FDLE) West Palm Beach office.
A Palm Beach County election worker saw the ad on the
eBay auction site offering the machine and ballot for $2,000, and
alerted a supervisor who called in the FDLE.
Posing as a buyer, agent John Marinello negotiated with the
sellers, who raised the price to $20,000 then settled on $4,000,
the FDLE said.
When Marinello went to claim the purchase late Thursday,
the FDLE arrested Mark Bruce Richter and Steven Robert
Solomon on charges of possessing and dealing in stolen property.
They face up to five years in prison if convicted on those
charges. Solomon, who had a semi-automatic pistol in his waist
bag, was also charged with carrying a weapon while committing
a felony, the FDLE said.
The pair said they found the voting booth Nov. 9 in the
housing development where they live, in a clubhouse that had
been used as a polling site two days earlier, the FDLE said.
The stylus used to mark punchcard ballots was still
attached, as was one of the controversial "butterfly" ballot
booklets that some Palm Beach County voters said were so
confusing they voted for the wrong presidential candidate in the
Nov. 7 election.
The FDLE said the suspects did not have any actual ballots.
Palm Beach County and the rest of Florida have been in the
eye of a post-election storm, with so few votes separating
Republican George W. Bush from Democrat Al Gore in the state
that 10 days after the voting neither man is yet assured a
presidential victory.
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