Latest on the recount:
>>News units hire researcher for second study of ballots
The Herald's separate review is already well underway
BY PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS
pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
A group of national news organizations and Florida newspapers announced Tuesday that it had contracted with a University of Chicago research center to conduct an in-depth inventory of uncounted ballots from the presidential race in Florida.
The effort comes on the heels of a comprehensive review of undervotes -- ballots where no vote for president was recorded -- being done in all of Florida's 67 counties by The Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder. The Herald has retained the services of a national accounting firm, BDO Seidman, which is now reviewing ballots in 28 counties. By the end of next week, The Herald's review will have tabulated about 50 counties, said Assistant Managing Editor Mark Seibel.
Florida's undervotes are expected to number between 40,000 and 60,000.
Members of the consortium sharing the cost of at least $500,000 to hire the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to oversee the study are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, the Associated Press, the St. Petersburg Times and the Palm Beach Post. Tribune Publishing newspapers, including the Sun-Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel, are also members.
Earl Maucker, editor of the Sun-Sentinel, said the consortium's ``intent is not really to count votes and determine who won.'' The goal, he said, ``is to better understand what went wrong'' and ``document history.''
Maucker said the group intends to complete the inventory in about eight to 10 weeks. NORC will produce a database that will describe the 180,000 Florida ballots that did not register a vote on machine counts -- including both undervotes and overvotes (two or more votes for president).
Seibel, who said The Herald is trying ``to provide an answer to people who are wondering what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not stepped into the Florida election,'' said the paper has no deadline for completing its own project, though it hopes to finish before the state Legislature meets in March. All but seven counties have set dates for the paper to inspect their ballots, he said.
John Bartosek, managing editor of the Palm Beach Post, said NORC staff members will do the hands-on part of the ballot review. He said his paper and the others do not intend to have reporters observing the count at all the counties -- unlike The Herald in its undervote review. The Herald has been sending both a reporter and a member of a national accounting firm to look at undervotes. The Herald intends to report only the results of the accounting firm's observations.
The Post shared costs of looking at ballots in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties with The Herald and did its own reviews in Martin and St. Lucie counties, Bartosek said.
NORC coders will record whether punch-card ballots' key chads were missing, hanging by one or more corners, or dimpled.
They will determine if light is visible around the dimple, and whether the rest of the ballot is similarly marked.
The Herald is using similar methodology, recording ballots by their characteristics.
USA Today has tentatively agreed to join The Herald in its review project.<<
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