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GOP accusations about the office's ballot miscount send the dispute to the State Attorney's Office. And two more lost ballots are found.
By EDIE GROSS
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 19, 2000
LARGO -- Eleven days after the ballots were cast, enough questions remain about how the Pinellas County elections office managed to miscount 2,372 ballots that the State Attorney's Office has been asked to join the fray.
Meanwhile, while certifying overseas ballots Saturday, elections officials announced that late last week they found two more ballots that went uncounted on Election Day. One, a regular ballot from Precinct 622, was left behind in a ballot box, and one absentee ballot was discovered among some paperwork in the absentee area of the office.
The results from those ballots, one vote for George W. Bush and one for Al Gore, were forwarded to the state elections office Saturday with an explanation. It was unclear Saturday whether they would be accepted into the state's official total.
But the county's elections canvassing board wound up doing more on Saturday than logging in those votes and certifying the overseas absentee ballots that were counted Friday.
The board -- consisting of County Judge Patrick Caddell, County Commissioner Sallie Parks and Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark -- voted to ask State Attorney Bernie McCabe to referee a dispute between the board and the chairman of the local Republican Party. GOP Chairman Paul Bedinghaus accused the board of misleading the public about how the miscounts occurred on Nov. 7.
The elections office plans to turn over written minutes from each of the canvassing board's meetings in the past two weeks to the State Attorney's Office on Monday so investigators can look for any inconsistencies in the board's statements to the public. McCabe said Saturday he was not sure whether his office would get involved.
"I've got to wait and see what the complaint is," he said. "If it doesn't involve something criminal, people can read the transcripts and draw their own conclusions just as well as I can."
The board felt that Bedinghaus' accusations should be looked at by a third party, Caddell said. "When he directly accused the canvassing board of misleading the people, that was something the board felt, if there's any truth to it, deserves to be investigated, and if there isn't any truth to it, deserves to be clarified," Caddell said.
Bedinghaus said he was not calling for a criminal investigation when he blasted elections officials; he just wants to know what happened in the ballot counting room on election night.
Somehow, 937 ballots were counted twice, and another 1,435 ballots were not counted at all. The mistake was discovered the next day during the mandatory statewide recount. When corrected, Gore gained 417 votes in Pinellas County while Bush lost 61.
Bedinghaus said it appeared at first that Clark had investigated what happened in the ballot counting room; she told observers on Nov. 8 that she thought up to three election workers may have been responsible for the mistakes.
But on Saturday, Clark said she did not know who was responsible nor had she had time to look into the matter.
Clarksaidshe has no plans for an internal investigation just yet.
"Certainly, I'm going to look into it," she said. "I'm not sure we'll ever know what happened. Am I going to interrogate people because Paul Bedinghaus thinks I should? No. I'll do what I think is best."