One Ballot, a Lot of Confusion

By MARK FINEMAN and MIKE CLARY

Nov. 9, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —

Theresa LePore was up all night, sifting the numbers precinct by precinct well after sunrise Wednesday. She was searching for anomalies, aides said, and preparing to defend the new ballot she had designed to make voting easier for the county’s large elderly population.

But nothing could have prepared LePore, Palm Beach County’s supervisor of elections, for the firestorm that would overtake this county seat.

Supporters of Vice President Al Gore gathered outside with signs urging motorists to “Honk for Re-Vote.” Others took to the airwaves with tales of anger and confusion in the polling booth.

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of three voters who say they were baffled by the new ballot and accidentally punched the box for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Gore. They are seeking to overturn the county’s election results.

By midday, LePore’s glass-walled ground floor office at the Palm Beach County Government Center became ground zero in the battle for the U.S. presidency.

At issue is the presidency, one heavily Democratic county along Florida’s Gold Coast and 3,407 votes.

That was the tally in this heavily Democratic county for Buchanan, whose name was opposite and slightly above that of Al Gore on LePore’s redesigned two-page ballot.

LePore, a 19-year civil servant and an elected Democrat, had expanded the one-page presidential ballot to accommodate a larger type font that elderly voters could read more easily. “I was trying to do a good thing,” she later said, “that I will not do again.”

But, within hours of the polls opening Tuesday, complaints trickled in from Gore voters who feared they accidentally voted for Buchanan. Local talk radio shows picked it up and, in the words of a local Republican official, “the feeding frenzy” was on.

“People came out of the ballot booth hysterical,” said Rep. Robert Wexler, the Democrat who won reelection in Palm Beach County. “They were screaming and crying when they realized what they had done.

“There’s no way [Buchanan] would get a turnout like that in Palm Beach County.”

During the initial ballot count, election officials in the county disqualified more than 19,000 ballots that were double punched with two presidential candidates. Gore supporters say that is further evidence that the new ballot confused many voters.

Wexler’s Republican counterpart in the district, Rep. Mark Foley, showed up at the courthouse with a predictably different perspective. He called the missed-punch-hole argument “a stretch of the imagination” and asserted that Buchanan easily could have polled 3,407 votes in a county that gave Foley’s own ultraconservative, Reform Party congressional opponent 2,651 votes on Tuesday.

“I saw them going to the polls with Confederate flags flying on their trucks,” said Foley, who said Democrats were grasping at straws.

Buchanan’s tally was outdone here by Ralph Nader’s 5,564 votes and dwarfed by Gore’s 268,945 and Bush’s 152,846.

Regina Porten, a lifelong Democrat, said she’s living with the fear she missed voting for Gore, by a single millimeter on a punch card.

Phyllis Rosenberg is upset too. She said that as she stood in a church and started to mark her ballot, she was so confused about which hole to punch for Gore that she asked an election official for help.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” said Rosenberg, 72, of Delray Beach, a Gore supporter. “I don’t know if I voted for the person that I was supposed to vote for, and this upsets me terribly.”

Although Buchanan’s share of the vote here dwarfed that in every other Florida county, this Democratic stronghold does have a history of supporting the Reform Party. In 1996, Ross Perot drew 30,744 votes here. Four years earlier, he polled more than twice that.

Still, Buchanan’s campaign said that election officials and voters in Palm Beach County have reason to be suspicious about his take there. Given Buchanan’s average vote in Florida’s other counties, election officials have told the Buchanan campaign that as many as 3,000 votes in Palm Beach may be “irregular.”

“Something may be off. Something may be wrong. Something may not be correct, but that’s up to the election officials to determine,” Buchanan spokesman KB Forbes said.

Overseas Absentee Ballots Still Out

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris said no state winner would be officially declared for at least 10 days, until all of several thousand absentee ballots from Americans overseas are received.

The still-incomplete recount produced a shift toward Gore on Wednesday, reducing Bush’s lead to less than 1,000 votes. In some of the state’s largest counties, the change was minimal. In Miami-Dade County, the recount showed Gore picking up 26 votes over Bush.

In Broward County, which went almost 3 to 1 for Gore, the vice president picked up 43 more votes, and Bush 44, for a net gain for Bush of one vote.

In a poll by television station WPLG, 50% of Miami area voters said they favored a new election. Forty-six percent said they would prefer to let the results stand.

Some of Florida’s 67 counties set up toll-free election complaint hotlines. But Miami-Dade elections supervisor David Leahy said there had been no confirmed reports of fraud or serious problems in Miami. Local television reported that a ballot box had been discovered Wednesday, but it turned out there were no ballots inside.

In North Florida, voters in heavily African American precincts near Tallahassee complained that traffic roadblocks set up Tuesday by the Florida Highway Patrol were designed to intimidate voters heading to the polls. Other black voters complained that they were turned away from the polls by workers who said there was a shortage of ballots, or that the would-be voters were convicted felons.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People called on U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to investigate. “These things suggest a pattern of deliberate attempts to suppress the level of African American votes in this important state,” said NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond.

Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Maj. Ken Hawes said any traffic stops made were a part of routine patrols.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he had heard no credible reports of vote fraud. But he did remind Floridians that “vote fraud is a felony.”

Indeed, Florida voters--and particularly those in Miami--are familiar with fraud charges. In 1998, a judge voided 5,000 absentee ballots, including one cast by a dead man, and reversed the outcome of a Miami mayoral election. Allegations of cash for votes also were substantiated.

“It’s ironic that the presidency hinges on Florida, because this state still has a Wild West mentality when it comes to voting,” said Donald Jones, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Miami. Jones, who recently lost a recount for a seat in the Florida House by 38 votes, added, “Florida has a long way to go to modernize the electoral process.”

USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said the ballot mix-ups could create a legal basis for challenging the vote. “If a voting machine was miscalibrated to count Gore votes as Buchanan votes, surely that would violate the right to vote and a court would devise a remedy.”

But UCLA law professor Daniel Lowenstein, an expert on election law, said he doubted the vote tallies can be challenged.

“I don’t think you can put the toothpaste back in the tube on this,” he said. “You can’t hold the election over again, and you have no basis for knowing how many votes were cast erroneously.”

Times staff writers Massie Ritsch in Los Angeles, Scott Glover and Meg James in Fort Lauderdale, and researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.

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Focus on Florida

The presidency is up for grabs in Florida, where a recount is underway. The state’s 25 electoral votes are necessary for either candidate to win office. Various media declared Vice President Al Gore the winner early in the evening, then switched the victory to Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Later, the race was declared too close to call. Here are their strongholds:

Sources: Times staff, Associated Press

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Disputed Ballots

Gore supporters complain that ballots in Florida’s Palm Beach County may have caused some Gore backers to unknowingly vote for conservative Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan had three times as many votes in Palm Beach than in the rest of the state. In a county so Democratic, that suggests to Gore’s team--and even to Buchanan--that voters were confused. But does the Reform Party’s performance in Florida in the last two presidential elections suggest Buchanan may have earned more of those votes than Democrats may like to admit?

Buchanan’s Share in Florida:

Statewide: 17,356 votes

Palm Beach County: 3,407 votes

Palm Beach County’s Voting Record: 1992

Bill Clinton (D): 187,869

George W. Bush (R): 140,350

Ross Perot (I): 76,243

1996

Bill Clinton (D): 230,687

Bob Dole (R): 133,811

Ross Perot (Reform): 30,744

2000 (unofficial)