Election whiplash leaves counters in limbo

By Times staff writers

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 10, 2000

The monthlong vote count in Florida was on-again, off-again Saturday.

The day began with confusion and grumbling, as election officials tried to comply with a state Supreme Court order to recount all votes passed over by machines. Then the U.S. Supreme Court told them to quit, granting George W. Bush's request for a temporary stay.

With the news, Republicans in Hillsborough County began hugging each other. At the Leon County Library, where more than 9,000 votes from Miami-Dade County were being counted, about 50 Bush supporters broke into song: "Nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, hey, goodbye."

'Thank you! That's what I was waiting for!'

TAMPA -- By 2:42 p.m. Saturday, nearly every undervote for Hillsborough County's 319 precincts had been sorted out. Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio was about to hand the first box of ballots to staffers to be counted.

Then County Judge James Dominguez appeared from a back room at the Falkenburg Road election center:

"The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a stay," Dominguez said. "All recounts are to stop."

Triumphant shouts reverberated down the corridor.

"Bush! Bush! Bush!" Republican supporters chanted, pumping their fists.

Dominguez, upset by the tumult, shook his index finger angrily.

"Thank you! That's what I was waiting for!" said A.J. Matthews, a Republican state committeeman. "Who loves the Supreme Court?"

The canvassing board earlier had decided to adopt Iorio's recommendations that only chad with at least one punched-out corner be reconsidered. The strict standard meant ballots with pregnant or dimpled chad would be tossed out of the recount.

With 5,533 undervotes, Hillsborough is second only to Miami-Dade County in the number of undervotes statewide.

-- KATHRYN WEXLER

'I think we're temporarily out of business'

Republicans in the crowd at the Pinellas County elections center erupted into cheers Saturday afternoon as the U.S Supreme Court's decision flashed on the muted television screen.

At least one broke into song.

"Now we don't have to change the name of Florida to Gore-ida," shouted Mike Freese of St. Petersburg, who then sang a few lines of a song he had written called Punchin' Chads For You.

The three-member canvassing board, which had examined 224 ballots in two hours, promptly stopped the manual recount. After reading a copy of the court's ruling, they adjourned.

"At this point, I think we're temporarily out of business," said County Commissioner Bob Stewart, a canvassing board member.

The 140 people packed into the 49th Street office milled about in varying degrees of depression and excitement.

Lance "Chip" Borman, a lawyer volunteering for the Bush team, said he expected the court's decision.

"If you want the most perfect way to do anything, this seems to be the last on the list," Borman said, gesturing toward the canvassing board table.

David Sullivan, a Massachusetts attorney for the Democratic Party, struggled to keep his disappointment in check after the ruling.

"I was surprised and outraged as a lawyer," Sullivan said. "The five-member right-wing majority of the Supreme Court has just decided to anoint the next president."

-- EDIE GROSS

'I have chads in my purse that I picked up'

DADE CITY -- News of the U.S. Supreme Court decision arrived with the electronic murmur of a cellular phone, spread through gasps and shouts, and halted the Pasco County ballot examination 25 minutes after it began.

With about 110 votes inspected, George W. Bush had picked up five votes and Al Gore had garnered two. Most ballots showed no intent of voting for any candidate.

The canvassing board had scrutinized only absentee ballots before it adjourned.

"We hadn't gotten to the point where it was like the horror stories you heard in South Florida," said official Republican observer Dennis Alfonso.

Starting at 10 a.m. in New Port Richey and Dade City, the Supervisor of Elections office staff used machines to separate 1,710 undervotes. They were all taken to Dade City in the afternoon.

The first recount on Nov. 8 showed 1,776 undervotes. The 66 ballot difference means that chads fell out of those ballots allowing the machines to register a vote, Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning said. Even though the votes were never part of an official count, they did not show up Saturday as undervotes.

"I have chads in my purse that I picked up off the floor," said Republican Lona O'Reilly.

Party observers watched intently throughout the day -- some with video cameras and magnifying glasses -- and Republicans filed several complaints over the process.

-- RYAN DAVIS

Judge goes from horse patrol duty to recount duty

BROOKSVILLE -- Eager Democrats arrived at the Hernando County Courthouse at 8 a.m. Saturday ready to watch another stage of Florida's presidential vote count.

Supervisor of Elections Ann Mau did not open her office until 11:10 a.m., and the canvassing board did not convene until 12:26 p.m. Its chairman, County Judge Peyton Hyslop, had been organizing horses at the county's annual Christmas parade "so the bands didn't step in anything."

Immediately, observers clamored for information: Who would count the ballots? How would they be sorted?

Hyslop responded that volunteers would sort ballots by hand and set aside any that appeared to be over- or undervotes. The goal was to find 248 of them.

The board would review the selected ballots to ensure they were the right ones, and then to see whether voter intent could be discerned. No objections would be accepted locally, he said.

At 1:16 p.m., the team of 56 sorters began. Three hours later, just as the group finished its last box of ballots, came the word to stop.

"Ohmygosh. Yes!" shouted a Republican stalwart. "It's an outrage," said a Democratic observer.

The board continued to sort through the selected ballots as the volunteers left, raising Republican complaints. It did not count any votes.

-- JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK

'All we're doing is doing our jobs'

INVERNESS -- The annual Christmas Parade started off at noon Saturday. Meanwhile, just a few blocks away at the Citrus County elections office, people settled in for what they thought would be a long spell of sitting, not marching.

More than two dozen poll workers parked themselves on folding chairs and, shortly after 1 p.m., began the laborious task of hand reviewing 57,000 ballots and setting aside ones that showed no vote for president.

Rain couldn't stop this particular parade. But the U.S. Supreme Court could -- and did.

Word came from the office TV, which was tuned to MSNBC.

"We'll do what we're told. At this point, all we're doing is doing our jobs as directed by the courts," said County Judge Mark Yerman, chairman of the canvassing board.

Citrus had 163 of the so-called "undervotes." But there is no telling how many votes, if any, either candidate had gained when counting stopped.

The canvassing board had agreed to manually review the 163 once workers had culled them from the 57,000 plus ballots.

Citrus County Supervisor of Elections Susan Gill had set up eight tables, each staffed by three poll workers. At least one worker at each table was a registered Democrat and at least one a registered Republican.

Workers had made their way through three or four precincts when the Supreme Court announcement came.

-- JIM ROSS

'There's not going to be enough time'

OCALA -- Five seconds.

That's how far away the Marion County canvassing board was from dipping into the first of 2,409 undercounted ballots in Ocala on Saturday afternoon, when cell phones and pagers broke into a chorus.

The rumor: The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered Florida's recounts to stop.

After an audience member said he received a similar call, board Chairman John Futch announced he would temporarily suspend the recount until getting official word.

Kimberly Warden, a Democratic National Committee attorney, protested that the recount should continue until the board received verification of the high court's decision.

Futch, a Republican administrative judge, decided to suspend the counting unless the court said otherwise.

Richard Perry, a local attorney and member of Florida's Democratic Executive Committee, gazed dejectedly at the floor.

"There's not going to be enough time to count the undercounted ballots," he said with a sigh.

In Marion, machines had found 2,409 undercounted ballots, or 35 fewer than the board previously identified Nov. 8. No one could say for sure why, but it seemed likely pieces of chad had fallen off.

On the critical question of assessing voters' intent, no criteria had been set. Futch said it didn't make sense to do so until the three members -- two Republicans and one Democrat -- began handling ballots.

-- SCOTT BARANCIK

'Judges are not wildly liberal people'

In Tallahassee, where about 9,000 Miami-Dade undervoted ballots were being counted, Leon Circuit Judge Terry Lewis abandoned plans to have employees from the county clerk's office do the work.

Instead, he enlisted eight fellow judges, who, with the help of deputy county clerks, spent nearly five hours counting ballots at the public library. Then word spread shortly before 3 p.m. that the U.S. Supreme Court had called a halt.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, who coordinated the recount, said he was "saddened" by the stoppage because roughly 6 percent of the undervotes had been converted to new votes for Bush and Gore.

Based on that figure, "there were thousands of votes that were not counted in this election," he said. "That's simply not right."

He argued that the new votes were credible, saying the Leon County judges had adopted a conservative standard, generally not counting the much-maligned "dimpled" ballots as votes. "Judges are not wildly liberal people," he said.

The library was visited by California Sen. Barbara Boxer for the Democrats and New York Gov. George Pataki for the Republicans. A lively Republican crowd held signs, including some that depicted the Florida's seven Supreme Court justices wearing ears.

Leon County officials had planned to have the Miami-Dade undervotes recounted by 9 p.m. Saturday. Dave Lang, the plain-spoken clerk of courts, said it was "sort of like the end of a picnic."

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