THE LATEST>>>>>>Judge freezes ballots
until next week
By Scott Hiaasen, Marc Caputo and Joel
Engelhardt, Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 10, 2000
WEST PALM BEACH -- A circuit judge seized
control of Palm Beach County's presidential
ballots Thursday, bringing the courts into an
election that has made the county the epicenter
of a growing political crisis.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll
issued a temporary injunction Thursday night
preventing the county's elections canvassing
board from releasing the ballots before a court
hearing next week.
The injunction was requested by Beverly Rogers
and Ray Kaplan, two Boca Raton voters who
filed a lawsuit saying they and thousands like
them were cheated out of their right to vote
because the county's two-sided ballot was
illegally confusing.
Challenges from voters, protests in the streets
and a request by Vice President Al Gore
pressured the canvassing board Thursday to agree to a manual recount of
more than 4,600 votes on Saturday. This, after a state-mandated, electronic
recount on Wednesday discovered 865 votes that went uncounted on election
night.
The board also agreed to George W. Bush's request for an electronic recount
of all 461,000 ballots. That count, also set for Saturday, will mark the third
time the ballots have been run through the machines.
The need for a recount became even more apparent when it was discovered in
the first recount that votes from one precinct were not counted on election
night. An elections worker hit the wrong button, erasing the results.
On Thursday, the three members of the canvassing board -- Elections
Supervisor Theresa LePore, County Commissioner Carol Roberts and County
Judge Charles Burton -- met before a dozen television cameras and decided
not to send any of the county's votes to the state for approval until the many
challenges to the ballot are heard.
The hand count could reveal discrepancies that would help Democrats attack
the Palm Beach County ballot in court. It also could validate ballots previously
considered invalid. Meanwhile, more than 19,000 votes in the presidential
election were declared invalid because people voted for two presidents.
So this weekend, with the whole world watching and the balance of a
presidential election potentially at stake, teams of people selected by the
board will eyeball thousands of ballots, literally holding them to the light to
check for irregularities.
The teams -- which should have Democrats and Republicans -- will pull ballots
from at least three precincts, representing 1 percent of the ballots cast. The
precincts will be chosen by the Democratic Party, which filed the protest.
The canvassing board must decide today the number of people for the hand
counting and who they will be. LePore, who has become the target of national
scrutiny over the ballot questions, is a Democrat, as is Roberts; Burton is a
Republican recently appointed judge by Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush.
The canvassing board agreed Thursday to allow two members each from the
Republican and Democratic parties to observe the elections in the manual-
and machine-counting rooms.
Any confusing ballots found in the hand count will be given to the board
members, who could be asked to look at ballots and decide for whom they
were cast. If discrepancies are found that appear to threaten the integrity of
the election, the canvassing board could request a hand count of every ballot
in the county.
After the hand count, all of Tuesday's 461,000 ballots will be rechecked by
machine at the request of the Republican Party, suspicious because most of
those newfound votes went to Gore and carved into Bush's narrow lead in
Florida.
One reason for that, a county employee pushed the wrong button while
recording votes from precinct 29E, west of Lake Worth, where voters favored
Gore over Bush 368 to 23.
"The `clear' button was hit instead," said LePore. "It was just an operator
error."
The Gore campaign also requested manual recounts in Volusia, Miami-Dade
and Broward counties, hoping to make up ground in an agonizingly close
election. Broward's canvassing board will meet today to discuss the request
by the head of the county's Democratic Executive Committee, who said 7,000
votes there went uncounted.
According to an unofficial Associated Press estimate, Gore trailed by just
over 200 votes after a recount of about 6 million ballots in the state.
Officially, however, Gore trails by 1,784 votes after state officials confirmed the
results from 53 of 67 counties.
Palm Beach County was among the 14 counties that have not submitted their
totals, and now the county can't approve the vote for state officials before
Tuesday's hearing in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. Secretary of State
Katherine Harris said all counties must submit their ballots by Tuesday, with
absentee ballots from overseas being collected until next Friday.
After its Thursday meeting, the canvassing board received a hand-count
request in the U.S. House race between incumbent E. Clay Shaw Jr. and
state Rep. Elaine Bloom. Democrat Bloom asked for it after a recount of
210,827 votes gave the Republican Shaw a victory by 599 votes.
Leon St. John, a senior assistant county attorney, said it apparently means
the board will have to count three additional precincts by hand on Saturday.
These requests, he said, can continue until the vote totals are certified.
"We're talking at least five, six hours to get through all this. All I can tell you
is it's going to be a long, really long day."
Staff writers John Pacenti and Marcia Gelbart and The Miami Herald
contributed to this story. |
