Gore Would’ve Won Fla. in Loose Count, Paper Says

Al Gore would have gained 784 votes in Palm Beach County if officials there had counted every ballot that had a hanging chad, pinhole or dimple, the Palm Beach Post reported Saturday.

Had the Post’s standard been used and its tally applied without any changes in counting procedures in Florida’s 66 other counties, it would have been enough to erase George Bush’s 537-vote victory margin in the state.

In Palm Beach County’s official 10-day manual recount, Gore had gained 174 votes. But those were not counted in the statewide tally because the county canvassing board missed the deadline by about two hours.

“It sounds like more science fiction to me,” said former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, who spoke for the Republicans about the Post’s examination. “It doesn’t matter how many times there’s a recount, there seems to be a disparity in the analysis. The basis upon which you draw a conclusion is subject to incredible impeachment.”

Gore lawyer Dennis Newman said the newspaper’s examination showed why the Democrats wanted every discernible mark counted as a vote.

“We thought all along that those dents didn’t get there on their own,” Newman said. “We knew that Bush would pick up votes also. We just thought that we would pick up more.”

In Palm Beach County, voters cast their ballot by placing a card in a machine and using a pin or “stylus” to punch out perforated squares that corresponded with their candidate.

But problems arose. Some voters said the county’s ballot was confusing and that they accidentally voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan rather than Gore. Others said the machines were defective and they were unable to cleanly punch their ballots.

Paper Looks Over the County’s ‘Undervotes’

The paper looked at the 9,150 ballots that county officials said had no vote for president--called “undervotes”--and found that 5,736 had a mark for either Bush or Gore. There were 462,350 ballots cast in the county, which Gore carried by an almost two-to-one margin.

During its manual recount, the Palm Beach canvassing board members--who were all Democrats--struggled over which ballots should be counted, so board Chairman Charles Burton went to court in hopes of having a firm standard set.

But Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that the board should judge every ballot on its own merit and count those where the voter’s intent could be determined. In the end, the board counted very few dimpled ballots.

The newspaper’s examination of ballots the board rejected broke them into three categories.

The paper found that Bush would have had a net gain of 14 votes if the canvassing board had counted the 62 undervotes that had a hanging chad. That’s where a candidate’s square is partially detached or is hanging from the ballot.

But, the newspaper found, Gore would have had a net gain of 25 votes if the canvassing board had then also counted the 313 ballots where light could be seen through the perforations of a candidate’s square or through a pinhole in the square. None of the corners of these chads were detached.

Finally, the paper found that Gore wold have had a net gain of 784 votes if the board had also counted the 5,361 ballots that had a dimpled chad, which means the chad had an indentation but no light could be seen through a pinhole or its edges.

Burton pointed out a problem with the Post’s method. If the canvassing board had counted dimpled chads as votes, it would have had to reject the ballots where voters made a clear punch for one candidate and made a dimple for another because that would have meant they voted for two candidates. It is unknown how many ballots would have been disqualified if that had been done.

Other Groups Also Reviewing Ballots

The Post is not the only newspaper reviewing Florida ballots. Two groups are conducting examinations in all 67 counties.

The first group--the Miami Herald; its parent company, Knight Ridder; and USA Today--had completed its examination in 65 of 67 counties as of Wednesday.

Last month, the Herald announced the results of a review of 10,644 uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade County showed Gore would not have gained enough votes to overtake Bush in Florida when combined with results from Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia counties. Gore had requested manual recounts of those four counties.

Gore would have gained no more than 49 votes in Miami-Dade, the Herald said.

The other group consists of the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Palm Beach Post, St. Petersburg Times, Wall Street Journal and Tribune Publishing, which owns the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. As of Tuesday, it still had 20 counties remaining.