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

To: DOUG H who wrote (88071)	11/26/2000 1:21:45 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Article...Gore to Contest Recount Result in Palm Beach... By DON VAN NATTA Jr. November 25, 2000 nytimes.com WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 24 — Vice President Al Gore plans to contest the election results in Palm Beach County on the grounds that dimpled ballots are not being counted as votes and that voter confusion over the "butterfly" ballot cost him thousands of votes here, senior Democratic lawyers and strategists said today. The Gore campaign said it was frustrated today that the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board did not count ballots with indentations next to the vice president's name as votes. Another basis for that challenge is 10,000 sworn affidavits signed by residents ranging in age from 18 to 98. Many of these voters said they were confused by the butterfly ballot's design or were denied assistance or given wrong instructions by harried and often rude poll workers, according to a summary of 300 affidavits and copies of dozens of sworn statements provided today to The New York Times by a senior Democratic official. Among the statements were hundreds from voters who complained that they struggled to get their paper ballots to fit properly into the county's punch-card voting machines. When Charles A. Bleich told a poll worker that his ballot did not align in the machine, he said the worker told him: "Thirty-eight states do it this way. Just vote." On a six-page affidavit, Ilyne Cooper of Delray Beach wrote: "The ballot was an obstacle course. Everything should have lined up, but it didn't. The names, arrows and punch holes were not properly aligned. The ballot started with numbers `3' and `5.' What is that all about?" Ms. Cooper added: "I hope I voted for Gore, but because of the misleading nature of the ballot, I cannot be sure I did." The affidavits put names, ages, backgrounds and circumstances to the longstanding claims by the Democrats that nearly 30,000 voters here could not, for many reasons, register their choice for the nation's highest office. Democrats also contend that they help explain how 19,120 of the county's residents voted for at least two presidential candidates and 3,407 residents of this Democratic stronghold cast ballots for the Reform Party candidate, Patrick J. Buchanan. Those issues have faded from public attention as the focus of public attention on the disputed Florida vote has fallen on the manual recount in Palm Beach and two other South Florida counties. Today the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board resumed its manual recount, beginning the arduous task of scrutinizing at least 6,000 contested ballots and trying to determine whether the slightest indentation amounts to a vote. Gore campaign officials announced on Thursday that they intended to contest the election result in Miami-Dade County because the canvassing board refused to continue a manual recount that it had begun. And tonight, senior campaign officials said they would likely file challenges to the results in other Florida counties as well. "It is very clear that the Gore campaign and their attorneys are going to continue to threaten legal action to change the rules of this election because they are not getting the results they like," said Scott McLellan, a spokesman for the campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. "Now that he is having difficulty reinventing the vote, Al Gore is attempting to reinvent old, discredited charges." Besides contesting the election here by challenging the legality of the butterfly ballot, senior lawyers and strategists for the Gore campaign said they would also challenge today's decision by the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board to toss out ballots that had only a single indentation in the column for the presidential candidates. Lawyers said a challenge of the board's standards on dimpled ballots is a stronger case to make than one of the legality of the butterfly ballot.