Florida Ballots to See the Light Again

Even as election officials cautioned that a private review of votes cast in the presidential election would not be conclusive, private citizens and news media groups prepared this week to begin their own inspection of the disputed ballots.

Several news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, were working to come up with a plan Friday as election officials in Broward County announced that ballots there would be available for viewing beginning at 10 a.m. Monday.

“There is the feeling that if only hand recounts had been allowed to continue, we would know the truth,” said Pam Iorio, Hillsborough County election supervisor and president of the state association of supervisors. “But the truth is very elusive in this presidential race. And I think what we’ll find is that the truth remains elusive.”

Elections officials across Florida were scrambling too. Officials from more than 30 of Florida’s 67 counties requested guidance from the state last week on how to handle the public scrutiny.

Each county is establishing its own fees for covering the cost of staff time to accommodate the inspection requests. But only election officials are allowed to touch ballots, so election workers will be assigned to hold up each ballot for observers sitting nearby.

David Beirne, Broward’s assistant supervisor of elections, said he expects representatives of as many as 12 groups to show up Monday for the review. He also expects attrition once the tedious process begins.

“I think we’ll have to explain to a lot of them what they’re looking at,” Beirne said. “And I hope many will become satisfied after one day of viewing.” He said two days had been set aside for the inspection, “and then we’re breaking for the holiday.”

The race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore was ultimately decided by less than 1,000 votes out of more than 6 million cast in Florida. Most of the requests from civic groups, news organizations and private citizens to review ballots have focused on the undervotes--those ballots set aside because vote tallying machines registered no choice for president. Complete manual recounts of those ballots were conducted in Palm Beach and Broward counties, and partial hand recounts were carried out in several other counties.

Ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties remain in Tallahassee, Fla., where they were trucked under a court order during legal challenges. At a hearing Friday, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis said he would instruct the counties to arrange by Tuesday to ship those 1.2 million ballot cards back to South Florida, where they will be made available for public inspection in accordance with Florida’s sunshine law, which establishes a basic right of access to most government meetings.

Lewis’ comments came during a hearing on a motion by the Palm Beach Post, which sought “immediate access” due to “the enormous public interest in an inspection of those ballot cards.”

David Leahy, Miami-Dade County election supervisor, said the outside observers will quickly come to appreciate the difficulty of deciphering voter intent.

Election officials in some counties, including Broward, intend to show the ballots one at a time to all observers present. Iorio suggested Friday in a memorandum to her colleagues that those who wanted to see the ballots will be seated four to a table. Each card “will be held up vertically in front of each requester,” she wrote. “The ballot handler will then reverse the ballot card to display the backside.”

Election officials are not required to follow those suggestions. Leahy said he is considering assigning an election worker to each observer. The ballots would be divided up and rotated among the observers.

Of Miami-Dade’s 10,750 undervotes, about 1,800 were hand recounted before members voted Nov. 22 to quit. From that recount, Gore netted 168 additional votes. At a pace of 120 ballots per hour, completing a review of 9,000 undervotes would take 75 hours, Leahy said.

Last month, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch looked at 630 ballots in Palm Beach County, categorizing them as clear punched, single dimple, multiple dimples, upside down, clear punch and dimple, and other.

The intent of the Judicial Watch inspection is not to determine an election winner, said President Tom Fitton, but to gauge the standards used by the canvassing boards.

Judicial Watch is among those asking to inspect ballots in every Florida county, with assistance from the Washington-based accounting firm of Johnson Lambert & Co. and about 500 volunteers.

Other seeking access include the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, “Inside Edition,” NBC’s “Nightly News” and the Nation.

The Miami Herald sued Miami-Dade County last month for the right to see the ballots. Sanford Bohrer, a lawyer representing the Herald and other publications, said that, even though the county is no longer contesting the request, the suit has not been withdrawn “to make sure we have access.” A hearing before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman is set for Thursday in Miami.

Iorio said she hopes those looking at ballots will not rush to draw conclusions. “This has been the most contentious election in the history of our country,” she said. “We need to step back from this a bit to see that [the review] is efficient, fair and orderly.”