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

To: KLP who wrote (3760)	11/28/2000 1:35:40 PM
From: Vendit™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6710

Watchdog group starts counting disputed ballots in Palm Beach County By KARIN MEADOWS, Associated Press Web-posted: 1:12 p.m. Nov. 28, 2000 WEST PALM BEACH -- Palm Beach County gave a law firm access to thousands of contested presidential ballots Tuesday, angering Democrats who said the punchcards shouldn't be touched until election disputes are over. ``It's outrageous,'' said Lance Block, a Democratic observer of the county's much-maligned and ultimately rejected hand recount. ``The possibility of the integrity of those ballots somehow being compromised is high.'' The ballots were opened under threat of a lawsuit from Judicial Watch, a law firm that has filed several suits against the Clinton administration in recent years. The firm enlisted hundreds of volunteers to inspect uncounted ballots in several Florida counties. Lawyers for Democrat Al Gore had asked a state court to seize about 800 Palm Beach ballots for a hand recount in Tallahassee. They contend that thousands of ballots in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County were either wrongly ignored or not counted _ more than enough to give Gore the state's decisive 25 electoral votes. Palm Beach County canvassing board chairman Charles Burton has estimated that Gore would have picked up 220 to 225 votes in the manual count that was rejected as incomplete Sunday by Secretary of State Katherine Harris. She instead accepted a machine recount before certifying Republican George W. Bush as the winner in Florida. The county is scrambling to complete the necessary audit of the manual recount before it releases the final results. Late Monday, spokeswoman Denise Cote said the manual count did not match up with the last machine count but refused to discuss details. Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel for Judicial Watch Inc., said the conservative legal firm is trying to determine what standard canvassers followed in judging voter intent during the manual recount. He said its review so far found ballots counted with ``no discernible standard.'' Dennis Simmons, a Democratic lawyer, called the law firm's effort a ``publicity stunt.'' Block said Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore should not yet be showing ballots to the public. ``She needs to be over there crunching those numbers,'' he said. The canvassing board labored for days to review some 14,500 disputed ballots but sent partial results to state officials because it couldn't finish the job by a state deadline of 5 p.m. Sunday. The board kept working after Harris rejected the manual count and finished about two hours later. Cote said 20 percent to 25 percent of the precincts counted after the deadline had unspecified problems matching up with the machine recount. She said ``unaudited figures'' from the manual recount were sent to state elections officials for certification, though that doesn't mean the numbers were wrong. County Attorney Denise Dytrych said Tuesday: ``We're talking about a small number.'' It was unclear what impact, if any, the glitch would have but it raised the possibility that if a court orders the state to accept results from the manual recount _ and lawyers for Gore say he would have picked up 215 votes _ those numbers are in question. ``I'm at a loss,'' said Tucker Eskew, a Bush spokesman. ``It's very suspicious. They've got a lot of explaining to do. It's been good intentions clouded by political mischief. Hard work undermined by human error, and all of it in the name of trying to make good a process that is utterly bad.'' Lawyers for Gore filed suit Monday in Tallahassee over the recounts in Miami-Dade, Nassau and Palm Beach counties. Multiple problems were alleged in Palm Beach: The lawyers said that Harris ignored the ``true results'' by rejecting the partial count, that ballot problems kept some voters from clearly registering their choices and that canvassers wrongly ignored partially perforated or indented ballots. They were blistering in their assessment of the three-member board, all of them Democrats. ` `For example, on information and belief, the board used a standard that failed to count ballots with indentations or dimples for a presidential candidate unless the ballot also revealed similar indentations, falling short of complete perforations, in other races,'' the Gore complaint said. ``Applying this rigid rule did not honor the voters' intent or satisfy the applicable legal standard.''