dwight. Palm Beach "spontaneuos ballot protests" were bought fron TeleQuest by the Democratic National Committee per Washington Post/AP. Not endorsing Robert Crook at this time -- just pointing out this possibility.
JohnG
washingtonpost.com
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 |
