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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Slugger who wrote (5950)	11/13/2000 11:24:42 PM
From: Slugger	Respond to of 10042

Butterfly Ballots Under Fire in Florida, But Not in Other States Monday, November 13, 2000 By Catherine Donaldson-Evans South Florida isn't the Lone Ranger in its use of "butterfly ballots" — the voting forms at the center of the fight over who will be the country's next president. Counties in Ohio, Illinois and West Virginia all used a variation of the same two-page punch-card design that poll workers gave voters in Palm Beach County, Fla. Few voters in those counties complained, although election officials said the forms confused some people. "It's a ballot used elsewhere; it's not as if this was the first time," said elections expert Darrell West, political science professor at Brown University. It was the first time Palm Beach County used such a ballot for a presidential election, said Jamal Simmons, Democratic National Committee spokesman for the recount effort there. The Palm Beach butterfly has two facing pages, with candidates' names in staggered blocks alternating between the left- and right-hand sheets like steps. Some running for the same office appeared on opposite pages, not in one vertical column; voting punch-marks were lined down the middle. The ballot was apparently designed so senior citizens could better see the enlarged names, but Democrats have charged it bewildered thousands of voters who wanted to pick Vice President Al Gore. Several residents said they accidentally chose Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, because the spot to punch for a Buchanan vote was sandwiched between the names of Gore and Republican contender George W. Bush. The confusion snowballed into a national dilemma when it became clear that both Gore and Texas Gov. Bush needed Florida's 25 electoral votes to win the presidency, and a swing of a few hundred cast anywhere in the state could topple the tally in either candidate's favor. The Gore campaign has argued that since so many ballots were tossed because voters mistakenly picked two candidates, the vice president should have won a larger victory in predominantly Democratic Palm Beach. Across the county, 19,120 people chose two or more candidates, and 10,582 votes didn't register at all in the presidential race — meaning a total of nearly 30,000 ballots were invalidated, said local state Democratic Sen. Ron Klein of Boca Raton. Republicans countered that in 1996, an election with a lower turnout, about 14,000 people in Palm Beach County voted for more than one candidate, or didn't successfully vote for anyone. That figure, Bush supporters said, indicated the confusion was already there, and wasn't created by the butterfly ballot this year. But Klein said this year's vote was flawed because invalidated ballots actually doubled. Bush supporters looked to parts of Chicago and surrounding Cook County, Ill., that use a similar system to the one causing the Florida uproar. Chicago-area officials said their cards were slightly different because no candidates running for the same office were listed on opposite pages. While defending their ballots, county leaders also admitted the system probably needs to be changed. Like their Floridian counterparts, 120,503 of the 2 million Cook County residents who trekked to the polls there wound up submitting invalid voter cards, according to The Chicago Tribune. That's due to either "overvoting" — punching holes next to two or more presidential candidates — or "undervoting," failing to register a choice because they didn't fully puncture the circle next to the name. County officials acknowledged the same problem resurfaces in every election, but said few area citizens have formally complained. Election observers reported no complaints in West Virginia, where some residents used similar voting cards. New Hampshire banned all punch-card voting when its secretary of state protested against adopting the system in 1986 on the grounds it might perplex people. About 70 of 88 Ohio counties also use a version of the butterfly ballot. One election official from Cuyahoga County said he wasn't happy with the method. "It's difficult for people to punch, and so human-intensive there's bound to be mistakes," elections board member Thomas J. Coyne told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Some voters there reportedly spent as long as 10 minutes staring at the ballots, with a few saying they had to take the sheet out of its slot to eye it. Floridians described similar bewilderment. "I don't think anybody would question there was confusion here," Klein said. "There's something fundamentally wrong with the voting process in Palm Beach County." foxnews.com

To: Slugger who wrote (5950)	11/14/2000 5:44:11 AM
From: JDN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Dear Slugger: Also Monday, Broward County officials said they plan to begin a hand recount of about 6,000 ballots in three precincts. If major problems are found, authorities will consider a full hand count of all precincts in the Democratic stronghold. They did in fact complete the TEST precincts in Broward and found NOTHING AMISS and refused to proceed on to a full handcount. RESULT, Gore camp is now SUING THE DEMOCRATS that made that decision. These people will EAT THEIR YOUNG to survive. JDN