Palm Beach County: Past Ballot Problems Galore
Saturday, November 11, 2000
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It's not the first time election irregularities have plagued Palm Beach County. Nearly 15,000 ballots were disqualified from the presidential election four years ago.
What is it about this heavily Democratic county that causes a disproportionate number of problem ballots?
"If there's any county in the world that would have a population that would struggle with any ballot, it would be that one," said Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University and former Palm Beach County resident.
Demographics are key, he suggested.
One in four county residents are age 65 or over, and many of the elderly are immigrants whose first language is not English. Despite its image to outsiders as a playground for the likes of Donald Trump, many residents are poor. The population turns over rapidly, and about 60 people on average move into the county every day.
They may not be accustomed to the kind of ballot — the "butterfly" that has been flashed on TV screens around the globe in recent days as the balloting crisis has unfolded — used in Palm Beach County, deHaven-Smith said.
The county is heavily Democratic, which was reflected in the presidential balloting. Gore received 269,696 votes, compared to 152,954 for Bush. The recount found an additional 751 votes for Gore, compared to an additional 108 for Bush.
The embattled Palm Beach canvassing board in charge of the ballot recounts in the county is one of 67 elected county boards in Florida, each with the power to design its own ballots.
The local officials elected to the boards may have limited experience with vote-supervision matters and may have difficulty getting money from county commissioners for running their operations, deHaven-Smith suggested.
"The bureaucracies in small-town Florida are horribly inept," said Kenneth Rijock, a consultant to law enforcement agencies and a longtime Miami resident.
The large number of older people in Palm Beach County also likely played a role, he added, with many elderly voters perhaps "not as sharp as they used to be."
Four years ago, 14,872 Palm Beach County ballots were thrown out either because they lacked a vote for a presidential candidate or because they had two such votes.
On Tuesday, about 30,000 faulty ballots halted the selection of the nation's 43rd president and brought heavily Democratic Palm Beach County to the world's attention.
"There are always these under- and over- votes. It just happens," said Bruce Rogow, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. Rogow is representing Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County election supervisor, a Democrat, who designed the ballot that some voters say was so confusing it may have cost Vice President Al Gore the election.
"Maybe some people just pass on it; maybe they don't like any of the candidates," Rogow suggested.
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