Voting machinery played a large role in rejections.
"Of the 51 precincts in which more than 20 percent of ballots were rejected, 45 of
them used punch cards -- 88 percent. Of the 336 precincts in which more than 10
percent were tossed, 277 used punch cards -- 78 percent.
"The overall rejection rate for the 43 optical counties was 1.4 percent. The overall
rejection rate for the 24 punch-card counties was 3.9 percent. That means that
voters in punch-card counties, which included urban Democratic strongholds such
as Broward and Palm Beach counties, were nearly three times as likely to have
their ballots rejected as those in optical counties.
"In dozens of Florida precincts, at least one out of every four ballots was
discarded as having no vote or too many votes for president.
"Nearly half of Gore's margin, more than 11,000 extra votes, would come from
Palm Beach alone. The other counties that would give him more than 1,000 new
votes are Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval and Pinellas. Of those, Bush carried only
Duval in the official tabulation.
"Palm Beach, home of the infamous butterfly ballot, and Duval, where
candidate's names were spread across two pages, had 31 percent of the
uncounted ballots, but only 12 percent of the total votes cast.
"More than 11 percent of precincts statewide recorded no discarded ballots."
Saturday, December 2, 2000, Miami Herald |
