http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/11/election.president/
CNN.com
November 12,
2000
Election
officials call for full hand recount in Palm Beach County Vote
At a press
conference early Sunday, Palm Beach County officials voted to hand count all
ballots cast in the county in Tuesday's presidential election
Injunction
would stop hand recounts
WEST PALM
BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- Palm Beach County election officials voted early Sunday
to order a manual recount of all votes cast in the county during last week's
presidential election.
A full
recount would involve reviewing more than 400,000 ballots by hand in one of
South Florida's most populous counties. It was not immediately clear when such
a recount would take place -- because Republicans are challenging recounts in
Florida.
Appearing
before reporters about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, the county's three-person canvassing
board voted 2 to 1 to ask for the hand recount after reviewing hundreds of
ballots checked in four sample precincts in Palm Beach County.
They had
been asked by Democratic Vice President Al Gore's campaign to check for
possible instances in which tabulation machines had failed to note marked
ballots.
Members
Carol Roberts, a county commissioner, and Theresa LePore, the county's
supervisor of elections, approved the motion for the full recount. Board
chairman and Palm Beach County Judge Charles Burton voted against the motion
because he said he preferred to first seek an advisory legal opinion from state
authorities.
Also Sunday,
Volusia County was expected to begin a hand recount, while Broward and
Miami-Dade Counties planned to begin similar efforts early next week.
Bush leads
by several hundred votes
Roberts made
the motion because she said the board's sample hand review Saturday indicated
the possibility that hundreds of voters' ballots had not been counted last
week.
The daylong
and unofficial count found 33 more votes for Gore in the four precincts. Bush
gained 14 votes.
In Florida,
where more than 5.8 million votes were cast for president, Bush's lead is just
a few hundred votes, Roberts said. The race for U.S. president hinges on who
wins Florida and garners its 25 electoral votes.
"Given
the importance of the election and the fact that the present margin is
approximately 300 votes in the state, I believe the people of Palm Beach County
have entrusted us with the power to voice their right to participate in their
government," Roberts said.
Democratic
officials present during the count encouraged the board's review. Republicans
spoke against it, arguing it was a "painful" and
"uncertain" process.
The board
also agreed to meet again Monday to discuss the issue further.
It was
unclear how soon the process could begin. The Bush campaign filed papers
Saturday in federal court seeking to halt manual recounts in Florida, and a
judge is set to consider the request Monday.
The manual
counting process began about 2 p.m. EDT Saturday. Election workers sorted
through the ballots, checking for anomalies such as partially punched cards.
Potentially
problematic ballots then were gathered into one pile, where canvassing board
members scrutinized them. Sometimes, the board held them up to the light,
checking for marks that would indicate a voter had tried to punch the name of
one candidate or another.
Several
thousand ballots in Palm Beach County had been mechanically rejected last week
because machines could not detect punched votes in the cards.
Bush
challenges hand count
Also
Saturday, the Gore campaign condemned the legal challenge filed by Bush seeking
to stop hand recounts of presidential votes in Florida.
Former
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who is observing the Florida recount on
Gore's behalf, called on the Bush campaign to drop its bid for an injunction.
"We
call upon the Bush campaign to withdraw the litigation they have filed today
and to allow a new and accurate count to be made of all the votes in the state
of Florida," Christopher told reporters.
Bush held a
news conference at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and referred questions about
the Florida dispute to Republican election observer and former Secretary of
State James Baker.
Earlier
Saturday, Baker argued that manual counting would be subject to "human
error, individual subjectivity and decisions to determine the voters'
intent" that would not occur if machines were used.
"Machines
are neither Republicans nor Democrats and therefore can never be consciously or
even unconsciously biased," Baker said.
Campaign
officials for Vice President Gore, however, claimed that Republicans had agreed
to a hand count Friday in Seminole County, Florida, which was overseen by a
Republican congressman. Americans would "reject Mr. Bush's arrogant
stance," a Gore official said.
Bush said
his campaign would "be willing to withdraw that lawsuit" if the Gore
campaign dropped its request for a hand recount.
"There
are still absentee ballots to be counted," the Texas governor said.
"And this election will be determined after those absentee ballots have
been counted. We've counted once and we recounted in Florida."
Overseas
absentee ballots will be counted until November 17, as long as they were
postmarked by November 7, Election Day. Those votes, which include a large
number of military personnel, have traditionally leaned toward the Republican
candidate.
"It
would be good for this country to have this election over so that the new
administration can do the people's business," said Bush, who appeared with
vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, and former Transportation Secretary
Andrew Card.
Both sides
weigh other options
Gore did not
appear in public during the day, instead dispatching Christopher and William
Daley, his campaign chairman, to speak with reporters outside the vice
president's official residence.
"The
hand count can be completed expeditiously and it should be," said
Christopher, who admitted that the Gore camp was looking into other options.
"Until
today the Bush campaign has argued every minute counts. We have constantly
maintained however, as we continue today that every vote must count."
With the
presidency hanging in the balance, Florida's vote -- remarkably close and
fiercely contested -- is virtually certain to tip the electoral tally.
Pending the
outcome of the legal challenge, the voting dispute could very well spread to
other parts of the country where local Republicans have indicated an eagerness
to challenge narrow Gore victories. A recount in one New Mexico county has
moved the state, which was declared for the Democratic candidate on Election
Night, back into the undecided column.
GOP
officials have also cited voting irregularities in Wisconsin, a state Gore won
by less than 6,000 votes. Some have called on Bush to request recounts in Iowa
and Oregon as well.
"All
options are open," Bush told reporters at his ranch.
Palm Beach
County under court order
An
unofficial tally of the recount in Florida's 67 counties showed the Texas
governor with a 327-vote lead over the vice president in the state. State
officials said their recount of 66 counties showed Bush leading by 960 votes.
Palm Beach County is the 67th.
[photo,
ballots]
Florida
elections officials hold ballots up to the light as they conduct a manual
recount Saturday
The deadline
for requesting a manual recount for the 53 Florida counties that have already
been certified by the state passed Friday night. The state's 14 remaining
counties, including Palm Beach, can still request manual recounts of Tuesday's
results.
Palm Beach
County is under a court order not to certify results before Tuesday. The order,
handed down by Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll, is the result of one of eight
lawsuits filed by voters who say a faulty ballot design may have caused them to
vote inadvertently for Pat Buchanan when they intended to cast ballots for
Gore.
The
Republican lawsuit to halt the recount was assigned to U.S. District Judge
Donald M. Middlebrooks, a Clinton appointee, in Palm Beach County.
Florida
official fears 'meltdown'
Florida's
top election official warned the state's counties and the presidential
candidates Saturday against prolonging the recount, saying the system is about
to "melt down."
Bob
Crawford, who replaced Gov. Jeb Bush as commissioner of Florida's Canvassing
Commission, said Saturday that if a county misses the state's deadline for
certifying results, the entire county's vote will be thrown out.
"The
statute is very clear that if a county's results are not to us by 5 p.m.
Tuesday we shall ignore that county's vote, and the counties need to be very
aware of that," Crawford told reporters. "Candidates asking for
recounts need to be aware of that."
Crawford
also stressed that he believed the system is being pressed to its limits.
"You've
got boxes of ballots right now in Florida that will determine the next
president of the United States probably sitting in some closet in somebody's
office in some very small counties," he continued. "How long can that
go on and how long can we risk the integrity of those ballots? So we've got to
move this thing."
NAACP
hearing
With
feelings running high, hundreds of Floridians who complain that their votes may
not have been counted Election Day gathered Saturday to tell their stories at a
public hearing organized by the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People in Miami.
In his
weekly radio address Saturday, President Clinton, a Democrat, cautioned
patience as the recount proceeds in Florida.
"The
people have spoken," he said. "The important thing for all of us to
remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and challenges
to the election is in motion. The rest of us need to be patient and wait for
the results."
CNN.com
Writer Mike Ferullo, CNN Correspondents Mike Boettcher, Candy Crowley, Patty
Davis and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright
2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
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