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Hernando count revs up, only to halt
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK © St. Petersburg Times, published December 11, 2000 BROOKSVILLE -- For the past month, as television lights shone brightly upon several Florida counties and their presidential election woes, Hernando County stood seemingly immune. Its Nov. 8 recount went off without a hitch, and no one complained about its ballot style, voting system or absentee application process. When the Florida Supreme Court was to rule on Vice President Al Gore's contest of the state results Friday, members of the county canvassing board gave no thought to getting dragged back into the morass. County Judge Peyton Hyslop was hearing a landlord-tenant case; Supervisor of Elections Ann Mau was shopping and County Commission Chairman Chris Kingsley was playing golf. They had to stop their activities when the news came. The top state court had ordered that all counties that had not manually counted the "undervote," those ballots that did not register a vote for president, now had to do so.That meant Hernando County, too. County Attorney Garth Coller burst into the Supervisor of Elections office just before 5 p.m. to figure out what to do. He had the elections office workers rouse the canvassing board members and went back to his office to confer with the other lawyers on his staff. After 30 minutes, Coller joined Supervisor of Elections-elect Annie Williams, who was supposed to be on vacation, in Hyslop's conference room. "Can you believe this?" Williams said with a sigh. "What now?" Coller wondered aloud. "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. I have to keep telling myself that. . . . Meanwhile, I haven't read the (entire) 70-page order." Coller then peppered Williams with questions about undervotes and overvotes, to determine which ones would need to be counted. Hyslop entered about five minutes later and quickly cut to the chase as he peeled off his black robe. "Has the circuit court now ordered us to do it?" Hyslop asked. Not yet, Coller answered. The conversation then turned to the issue of when to begin the work that all figured was soon coming. The group noted the ballots had not been sorted, which could take more time than the review, and began talking about dates when Mau called and promised to arrive in 10 minutes. "Y'all just couldn't have a party without me, could you?" Mau said, smiling as she cast her coat aside to reveal a Christmas T-shirt. "I heard the rejection of the other two (absentee ballot) cases, and then I went to the grocery store. Then they must have done it." While waiting for Kingsley, the assembled group assessed which precincts had questionable ballots and discussed the best way to sort the 248 sheets of paper from among the 65,500 that had been cast on Election Day. Kingsley arrived at 6:40 p.m. After updating him, the board began making decisions. They would look for the ballots by hand, rather than by funneling them through voting machines, and they would use community volunteers to help. The board would make the final call on whether any votes would change. And they would count blank votes and overvotes alike, as each could be considered a ballot that did not register a vote for president. Everything would have to begin after the annual Christmas parade because Hyslop and Kingsley had to participate. The count would begin at noon Saturday, Hyslop said, unless a court order said differently. The board adjourned at 7 p.m. A handful of Democrats showed up outside the Hernando County Government Center at 8 a.m. Saturday, passing by families there the parade. The Democrats didn't get into the Supervisor of Elections Office for about three hours. It didn't seem to matter. "I just decided to wait them out," said Steve Zeledon, a county Democratic Executive Committee leader. Volunteers started arriving around 11:15 a.m., taking seats around seven card tables inside the office. After greeting them, Mau settled in behind a typewriter to peck out the county's plans for counting ballots. By noon, the Elections office was filled and heating up in temperature and rhetoric. Republicans, less pleased with the prospect of a count, had just started to arrive. Mau asked dozens of people to wait in the hallway, to ensure compliance with the fire code. Several of those who remained in the room demanded to know the rules. They had to wait for Hyslop, who was directing horses in the parade so "the bands didn't step in anything." He came in at 12:25 p.m. to cheers and applause. Hyslop described the process that the board had agreed upon Friday evening. The volunteers would search for the number of blank and overvoted ballots that were supposed to be in each precinct, he said. When they got to the correct number, they would stop, he said. After all 248 ballots were found, the board would review them. Anyone with protests should file them with Judge Terry Lewis' court. Mindy Watkins, a Republican volunteer, raised a question on many peoples' minds: How would the board know it had the correct ballots if it stopped after the volunteers found what they believed to be the right number, especially if the ballots would not go through a voting maching to make sure? "Who's going to determine those were the actual ones that were kicked out?" Watkins inquired. The first response was terse. The board was doing all that the order required, Mau asserted. Soon after, with threats of a formal protest emerging from the Democratic party, the board relented and said all ballots would be reviewed and each selected would be passed through a voting machine to make sure it registered as blank or overvote. "That really ties it up so there can't be any doubt," Zeledon said of the change. The actual sorting began at 1:15 p.m. It was methodical work. Volunteers flipped through ballot after ballot, trying to find those that were, in Mau's words, "Blank. Nothing voted," or "Overvote. When there's two or three or four (marked). Anything more than one." Most ballots were completed properly, with the oval next to the candidate's name darkened fully. Yet some had the word "yes" written across the candidate's name, some had the oval outlined rather than filled, and still others had other odd markings. Observers from the two major parties watched at each of the seven sorting tables. When they had questions, they raised a hand and waited until Kingsley, Hyslop or Mau arrived with a ruling. Sometimes the effort proved difficult. The teams could not find the right number of blank ballots for Precinct 19, for example, or the one overvote that was supposed to be in Precinct 9. The intricacies fascinated many of the watchers, some of whom had come from Washington, D.C., the night before to participate. "This is politics and democracy in action," said Ben Weiss, a Gore volunteer from Maryland. "This is beautiful." At 2:52 p.m., as Hyslop and Williams began to run the chosen ballots through a voting machine to confirm that they were the right ones, a rumor began to spread that the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the counting to stop. State Sen. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, called Mau to let her know the news, which she had heard on CNN. "We all know what happened with CNN on election night," Mau said as she walked away from the phone. "We have to wait until we get a court order." Less than a half hour later, the order came across the fax. The group had just finished its hand sorting and was barely into its voting machine confirmation. "Oh, my gosh! Yes!" shouted a Republican stalwart, who pounded her fists on the table and then thrust them into the air. "It's an outrage," a Democratic observer said, shaking his head. Mau kicked her shoes off and climbed atop a metal folding chair. "We have an order that says to stop what we're doing. Stop. Don't count," she shouted. "We're not going to count until we get some other order of some kind. . . . Again, I thank you all."
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