This from this mornings news.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. –– Weary Palm Beach County election officials toiled through the night, punctuating their scrutiny of thousands of disputed presidential ballots with occasional dustups, as they strained to meet a Sunday recount deadline.
"We're moving along," Judge Charles Burton, the board chairman, said Saturday night. "We're trying."
Frustrated supporters of Al Gore, who asked for the count in the first place, said they will contest the outcome regardless of what it is.
The board will send partial results to the state if it fails to complete the hand count by 5 p.m. EST Sunday, although the state canvassing board hadn't decided whether to accept partial totals.
Nearly three weeks after Election Day, the three county board members – all Democrats – were getting edgy.
As their grueling examination ground on through the night under the watchful eyes of Democratic and Republican observers, Burton sparred with a GOP lawyer as board member Carol Roberts insisted, "We need to go on with what we're doing."
Burton later scolded the lead Republican observer, Mark Wallace, for arguing with Roberts while New York Gov. George Pataki sat in and observed the ballot review process for a few minutes on the GOP side.
"We've got a long night," Burton told Wallace. "If you can't shut up, we'll find somebody else."
The election officials lost a precious hour of work, roughly between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., as Republican attorneys challenged the order in which county precincts were being selected for ballot examination and Democrats disputed the accusations of unfairness.
The three county board members, all Democrats, have examined more than 4,900 of some 9,500 ballots in dispute because voting machines could not clearly read a presidential choice.
The vote totals made public by early Sunday, from 323 of 637 precincts overall, disappointed Democrats who had hoped to pick up hundreds of additional votes for Gore. The vice president had a net gain of 11 votes on Republican George W. Bush over the last machine count.
Board members had actually finished examining ballots from more than 100 other precincts but vote totals hadn't been released.
Bill Buck, a Democratic Party spokesman, said party observers have Gore up 78 votes, based on 415 precincts counted. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan estimated that Gore had a net gain of 86 votes through 428 precincts.
Whatever the result, it will be challenged.
Gore lawyer David Boies said Palm Beach County will be added to others where the vice president will contest the results because Democrats want a looser standard for counting indented – or dimpled – punchcard ballots.
The challenge is expected to be filed Monday, after the deadline for Democratic-leaning Palm Beach and Broward counties to turn in hand-count results for state certification.
Gore already plans to contest results in Miami-Dade County, which suspended its recount, and Nassau County, which decided to use Nov. 7 vote totals instead of a machine recount, resulting in a net gain of 52 votes for Bush.
Gore has argued that an indentation on the cardboard ballot indicates voter intent. He hopes to erase Bush's official 930-vote statewide lead by picking up votes among dimpled ballots.
A judge last week honored Gore's request to have dimpled ballots considered by the Palm Beach board, saying the ballots could be rejected only after an attempt to determine voter intent.
The board responded by saying it will not count dimpled votes for a presidential candidate if votes for other races on the ballot were clearly punched.
The Miami Herald reported Sunday that seven convicted felons – three Democrats, two Republicans and two independents – were able to vote in Palm Beach County because election officials failed to purge voter rolls of felons as they are required to do under state law. The paper said thousands of felons, who are not allowed to vote in Florida, remained on the ballot statewide. A Palm Beach county spokeswoman declined comment on the story.
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