Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 8, 2000
Truck that hauled Florida ballots for sale online; top bid: $80,300
After the ballot confetti we now know as chad, the yellow Ryder truck that delivered ballots to a Tallahassee court could be the most enduring symbol of this historic election. Now the Chad Chariot can be yours -- in an online auction.
"It's become a piece of history," said Allison Striegel of Budget Group, which owns the Ryder fleet. Since the truck's Nov. 30 voyage, Striegel said, the company has received so many offers to buy the truck and suggestions of museums to display it, Budget decided to put the 1999 Ford F350 on the Internet auction block. Proceeds will go to the American Red Cross.
As of Thursday night, the top bid was $80,300.
Bidding on the truck ends next Thursday at http://auctions.yahoo.com. For now, the famous vehicle is sitting empty at a Ryder lot somewhere in Fort Lauderdale.
Striegel said, "I'd rather not disclose the exact location."
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A Broward County circuit judge halted an examination of Broward's questionable ballots before it began Thursday at the request of lawyers for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
Judge Patricia Cocalis issued an order preventing county election officials from letting the organization Judicial Watch or members of several news organizations scrutinize 588,324 ballots in the unresolved contest between Bush and Vice President Al Gore.
In an order handed down moments after the ballots were supposed to be released at a Fort Lauderdale warehouse at 10 a.m., Cocalis ruled that "insufficient notice" had been given to all candidates listed on the ballot that the cards would be examined.
In response, Broward elections officials said they will start notifying candidates today and plan to allow the examination of the ballots by next Thursday.
NEW ORLEANS -- Dick Cheney is a Wyoming resident and therefore would be constitutionally qualified to serve as George W. Bush's vice president, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The ruling came from the bench after an hourlong hearing in which lawyers for three Texas residents argued that Cheney had moved to Bush's home state of Texas when he took a job there in 1993.
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution says that if the presidential and vice presidential candidates reside in the same state, then that state's electors cannot vote for each of them.
The three-judge appellate panel took a short recess after the arguments, then Judge Patrick Higginbotham returned to say without elaboration that the panel was in agreement that Cheney clearly is a Wyoming resident.
TALLAHASSEE -- With his state's presidential election still unsettled a month later, Gov. Jeb Bush wants to create a special panel to study Florida's voting procedures.
Bush said he wants to work with House Speaker Tom Feeney and Senate President John McKay to create a task force that would suggest new ways to count votes and to study whether election supervisors "should have unbridled flexibility as they do now."
"The focus of the task force is to look at the process of counting votes," Bush said Wednesday.
He wants the panel to make its recommendations before March.