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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mao II who wrote (82423)	11/20/2000 6:26:11 AM
From: Mao II	Respond to of 769667

DAY 13: America Held Hostage Palm Beach recount: Judge asks counters and observers to be nicer By KARIN MEADOWS, Associated Press Web-posted: 12:38 p.m. Nov. 19, 2000 The judge supervising the recount in Palm Beach County pleaded Sunday with counters and observers to be nice to one another, after a fracas broke out when a counter accidentally put a ballot in the wrong stack. "You would have thought she'd killed 14 people," said County Judge Charles Burton, a Democrat and chair of the canvassing board. Tensions have been running high in the counting room since the manual recount began Thursday evening. Observers have repeatedly complained about the mishandling of ballots, saying counters have improperly touched them, put yellow stickers on them, even chipped fingernail polish with one. After Saturday's counting was complete, Bush had a net gain of 12 votes with 31 of the 531 precincts tallied. The canvassing board said they had actually counted 202 precincts, but they were only releasing vote totals from precincts where no questionable ballots remained. The counting began again Sunday at 7:45 a.m. with an admonition from Burton to be more civil about pointing out questions or improper handling. "The counter shouldn't argue with the observer, turn around and say "What are you blind?" Point it out in a nice way, a non-accusatory way," Burton said. Burton said they hoped to finish the recount of the 462,350 by Thanksgiving Day but warned that would not happen if the objections continued at the current rate. He also said people in the counting room should not be so concerned about stray chads. Republicans have been collecting them. Burton recalled an incident late Saturday when an observer saw a misplaced chad. "I'm telling you the observer went crazy. There's a chad on the floor Help!"' Burton said, laughing. "Some of them are going to fall off, and that's fine. I think they were selling packets of 20 on e-Bay," he said. Early Sunday, the Emergency Operations Center where the counting was taking place was evacuated after security officials found a suspicious briefcase. A bomb-sniffing dog was called in around 12:15 a.m., but nothing was found. It turn out the briefcase in the counting room belonged to a court reporter who didn't hear an announcement seeking the owner of the bag, said Palm Beach County Sheriff's Lt. Patrick Kenny. On Sunday, security officials began checking everyone's bag at the door. On Saturday, GOP attorney Mark Wallace called on the board to take more time reviewing the ballots after a few ballots were found with the tiny chads reaffixed with tape. On Sunday, Burton advised counters to take a little more time. "The pace needs to be slowed down and it needs to be done in a much more thoughtful way," Wallace said. sun-sentinel.com