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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (3308)	11/24/2000 7:10:22 PM
From: Vendit™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6710

This gets better the further you read. To Count, or Not to Count? The rules keep changing in the vote recount in Florida. West Palm Beach, Fla. By: Paul M. Rodriguez rodriguez@insightmag.com “We’re doing what we have been told to do,” a West Palm Beach County elections official tells Insight. “I don’t know why we have to go through this but that’s the way it is.” The telling comment followed a Sunday bathroom break after this reporter spent a couple of hours watching the manual recounts at the command center inside the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations building. Watching with this reporter was David Gergen, the at-large editor of U.S. News and World Report. We had been granted special access to the otherwise off-limits command center to speak with election officials who sit in a small conference area that overlooks the amphitheater in which 20 to 26 teams of four people each spend tedious hour after hour manually counting tens of thousands of ballots. One of the officials, a woman who was joined by the county attorney and about seven others, told us that the counters are working hard to do a good job and to do so without favor. She and colleagues dismissed Republican arguments that the process was tilted in favor of Democrats and they argued that with the swarm of observers and press present there was no room for hanky-panky. “Contrary to what is being said, we’re just going about and doing our job of counting the ballots,” the county attorney said. When asked what the counts are showing, the elections’ officer and attorney both said something interesting: The tallies from the hand counts are virtually identical to the machine counts the county had conducted earlier. That said, the officials pointed out that there is one stack of ballots that has yet to be counted. These are the contested, or so-called set-aside, ballots that have been challenged by either Republican or Democratic observers. There are thousands of them and they could prove critical. Although there bas been a test sampling of about 30 precincts which showed a statistical dead heat between Al Gore and George Bush with neither candidate picking up votes, the officials insist these are just a sample and should not be viewed as conclusive. When asked who would count the contested ballots, the officials replied that the count would be done by the three-member county canvassing board, which is comprised of three Democrats. “They will do the count and resolve any disputes,” the county officer said. Shortly after gaining access to the nerve center this reporter was accompanied by an elections official to the restroom. Insight asked the point of continuing the manual recount of ballots — an inherently cumbersome process that changes totals no more readily than repeated machine counts — given that Bush was maintaining his lead over Gore, and the official replied: “We’re under orders.” Asked under whose orders, the official said, “Guess.” Asked if the orders came from the Gore campaign, the official said, “Yes.” And then added: “This is ridiculous, we’re wasting everybody’s time and nothing’s changed. We’re getting a black eye over this just because of politics.” This startling admission was made more dramatic when the official went on to reveal that the disqualification of hundreds of military ballots had been a fiasco. “This isn’t right,” the West Palm Beach elections official said, citing personal service in the military. Asked again why this was happening, the official just shrugged, threw a paper towel into the trash and banged through the restroom door into the hall. Meanwhile, with overnight news that Miami-Dade County officials had decided further to revise their revised decision first to ignore dimpled ballots then to include them in the manual recounts, even jaded newsmen began to question why the rules keep getting changed on a daily basis. Until the weekend, this reporter had noticed mildly a pro-Gore attitude among the scores of newsmen in the makeshift tent city in the parking lot of the West Palm Beach emergency center. As news kept filtering out on Saturday, Sunday and today about the rules changes in Miami-Dade and Broward County — allowing for interpretative conclusions about damaged or contested ballots with so-called pregnant ballot chads — murmurs could be heard from hardened political reporters that this is unbelievabe and unfair. Even several county and local police officers assigned to the complex, each identifying themselves to this reporter as solid Democrats, said what is going on stinks to high heaven. “They should put a stop to this,” a police corporal said. “It’s disgusting,” a sergeant agreed. All eyes now are on the Florida Supreme Court where oral arguments are being made by the opposing national camps with Republicans seeking to stop the recounts and certify the results according to statutory deadline and Democrats demanding that manual counts by Democrat-controlled boards go on and on until Gore can be declared the winner. As for a controversy first reported by Insight on Saturday concerning allegations of a cover-up involving misplaced ballots, the West Palm Beach elections board has chosen simply to ignore the issue. At least for now. insightmag.com