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Politics

Candidate pulls recount suit

Bernie Leven said he didn't want to impugn " three of the most honorable people.''

By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published November 18, 2006

INVERNESS - Defeated Democratic County Commission candidate Bernie Leven on Friday withdrew his lawsuit contesting the election results.

He still has concerns about touch screen voting machine accuracy and other questions about the voting system. But he disagrees with the process to request a recount.

To contest the results, he had to file a lawsuit against the county's canvassing board, composed of Supervisor of Elections Susan Gill, County Judge Mark Yerman and County Commissioner Vicki Phillips.

"Those are three of the most honorable people in the county," Leven said. "That's not right."

So, he decided to abandon the action.

The leadership of the Democratic Executive Committee, which voted to seek the recount and even paid Leven's $255 court filing fee, agreed to drop the suit as well.

"I know that the election would not be overturned. That was not why I did this," Leven said. "I was challenging the system of the new touch-tone votes."

Republican John Thrumston won the race, taking 1,599 more votes than Leven. No-party candidate Steve Hasel came in a distant third.

Thrumston said he believes Leven and the Democrats had the right to challenge if they wanted to do that. "I understand what it's like to lose. I've lost," he said. "Sometimes it plays with your emotions."

He said the challenge didn't really worry him, because he believes the outcome would have been the same. Thrumston is slated to be sworn in on Tuesday.

"I guess we'll just take this as a learning experience and move on," he said.

Bill Grant, chairman of the Citrus County Republican Executive Committee, called the lawsuit "amateur hour."

He said when he showed it to state party officials they thought it was a joke.

"This lawsuit on its face fails," he said. "They don't allege anything in there that would ever give rise to a recount."

And even though Leven withdrew the challenge, Grant said the damage was done.

"Once the milk has been spilt its hard to put it back in the bottle," he said.

"I'm just shocked that they would go and question the integrity of probably the three most honest people in Citrus County," Grant said, referring to the canvassing board members.

The issue of seeking a recount was a last-minute discussion by the DEC during its meeting Wednesday. The members debated the pros and cons of challenging the election process by challenging the outcome of Leven's race.

Mike Jarrett, chairman of the DEC, said that the group didn't understand the process and did not want to sue to get the recount.

"This came up at our meeting kind of out of the blue and what we thought we were doing was paying a fee for a recount," he said.

"We had no idea that we had to question the integrity of our supervisor of elections," he said.

The law sets out very specific grounds to challenge an election and they include misconduct, corruption, fraud, bribery, failure to count legal votes and allowing illegal votes.

"Our leadership agrees this was a stupid mistake for not looking closer" into what was involved in a recount, Jarrett said.

"We all ate crow for lunch. It was certainly agreed that it was not worth insulting Mrs. Gill to check on the accuracy of the machines," he said. "To take it to a lawsuit was never our intention ...

"We screwed up and we know it."

When the DEC discussed the idea, Leven said he did not push it. But he said he was willing to follow through with it because there were some discrepancies that a hand vote could have revealed.

"Florida doesn't have a very good track record on elections," he said.

His concerns were detailed in his lawsuit.

He questioned the accuracy of the touch screen results, saying that the system has not been tested by a recount.

He also mentioned problems with the optical scanning equipment. He said a poll worker had said that the machine at one precinct had been jamming throughout the day. When a voter asked if their vote had been counted when a problem would take place, the poll worker couldn't answer, Leven said.

He also questioned the 2,138 instances in which voters voted in another race but did not fill in a choice in his race, as well as the nine cases in which voters chose multiple candidates in his race.

There were also 38 absentee ballots rejected.

A hand count would show the voters' true intent, he said.

Leven said a voter might have circled a name or put a check mark in the box instead of filling in the full circle as is required for the optical scanning equipment to count the vote.

"The election process has to be determined by the voters intent. Again, what's more reliable, the man or the machine?" Leven asked.

He said he never wanted it to look like sour grapes because he did not win the election.

"Sometimes you try to do the right thing for the right reasons and it turns out looking wrong and offending a lot of people," Leven said. "I just want to get on with my life."

Gill said she talked to Jarrett about why the law was designed the way it was. Extremely close races trigger a required recount.

When the margin is larger, the parties must go through the circuit court.

"The idea was to prevent us from recounting every single election because someone is always unhappy," she said. "That's why we need the law to set out this procedure to get to the next level."

Times Staff writer John Frank contributed to this report. Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 17, 2006, 22:14:06]