doom and gloom in Florida

["Paul Tiger" <paul.tiger@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

August 28, 2004
In Palm Beach, Results of 2000 Still Stir a Fight
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Brushing away tears as she sat for an interview on a
hectic morning in the Palm Beach County elections office, Theresa LePore
wanted to be clear: her contact lens was bothering her, nothing more.

"I'm not crying, you know," she said with a faint smile.

Ms. LePore is clearly intent on showing that she is holding things together.
Four years after her county became the red-hot center of the 2000
presidential election standoff, she is under just about as much stress and
scrutiny as she was back then, when camera crews from as far away as Japan
camped at her office and she surrendered to emotional exhaustion and teared
up in public. She designed the infamous "butterfly ballot," and so in this
county that bears the most scar tissue from 2000, her name figures
prominently in the rallying cries leading up to Tuesday's state primary and
the far bigger test in November.

"She is the problem, my dear," said Donald Kronfeld, a retiree in Lake Worth
who said he, like thousands of other county residents, accidentally voted
for Patrick J. Buchanan in 2000 instead of Al Gore because of the confusing
ballot design. Other votes were invalidated because paper tabs called chads
did not properly detach from ballot cards. In all, about 29,000 ballots in
Palm Beach County were thrown out because they included votes for more than
one presidential candidate or appeared to have no names punched.

"She is exactly what everyone wants in a civil servant," said Sid
Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, which has
practically granted Ms. LePore folk-hero status.

Ms. LePore, 49, is determined to prove herself not just stoic but also
nonpartisan (she changed her voter registration to unaffiliated from
Democrat after 2000) and run a smooth-to-the-point-of-boring election this
time. But as the aftershocks of 2000 shudder on here, the leadup to November
is anything but dull.

Everyone in Palm Beach County wants redemption: the Democrats, many of whom
remain haunted by the knowledge that they voted for the wrong candidate back
then; the Republicans, tired of accusations that they stole the election;
and Ms. LePore, who wants to escape her Madam Butterfly label and
accusations that she caused everything from President Bush's victory in 2000
to the 2001 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.

She is up for re-election herself on Tuesday and is facing competition, for
the first time since she won the office in 1996, from an opponent who paints
her as incompetent. On the eve of the primary, which includes local
candidates and nominees to replace a retiring senator, Bob Graham, Ms.
LePore is again facing accusations of bad ballot design, this time with the
county's absentee ballot. It asks voters to connect an arrow to their
preferred candidate's name instead of filling in a bubble beside it. Ms.
LePore said she chose the arrow design, which is used elsewhere in Florida
and nationally, because studies suggested it was easier for voters to
understand.

Ms. LePore's opponent, Arthur Anderson, an education professor and former
county school board member, has sharply criticized the ballot design and the
fact that Ms. LePore's office mailed about 25,000 absentee ballots with old
instructions (they asked for a witness's signature, which state law no
longer requires). Though virtually unknown, Mr. Anderson is getting
high-profile help: former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont campaigned with him on
Monday, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a popular figure in
South Florida, is to campaign with him on Sunday.

Although Democrats hold a solid majority here, Palm Beach County is so big
that even a small shift among its 700,000 voters could make a difference in
the statewide result in November. Both parties are investing heavily here in
television advertisements and get-out-the-vote efforts.

But Ms. LePore and the jagged memories of 2000 are likely to draw even more
attention here.

"There is a high level of sensitivity, a high level of awareness about not
letting this happen again in Palm Beach County," said Ron Klein, a Delray
Beach Democrat who is the State Senate's minority leader. "We need to make
sure we get it right this time."

Of course, how to get it right depends on whom you ask. To the Democrats, it
means securing an even larger margin of victory than in 2000, when Mr. Gore
won almost two-thirds of the Palm Beach County vote despite widespread voter
error.

To the Republicans, it means capturing just enough traditionally Democratic
voters - maybe a few thousand, Mr. Dinerstein said - to give Mr. Bush a leg
up in a state expected to be extremely competitive. They are focusing on
Haitian immigrants and Jews, some of whom might switch allegiances because
Mr. Lieberman is no longer on the Democratic ticket and because Mr. Bush has
staunchly supported Israel, Mr. Dinerstein said.

First, though, both parties have to turn voters out at the polls, where
Election Day operations will be a lot different from 2000. Punch-card
ballots have been outlawed statewide and Palm Beach County sold many of its
chad-producing Votomatic machines on eBay, replacing them with touch-screen
machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif.

So far, Palm Beach County has experienced more success under the new system
than Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, which chose touch-screen machines
manufactured by Elections Systems and Software Inc. of Omaha. Ms. LePore
said she picked Sequoia because its machines had a promising track record in
Riverside County, Calif., which has a voter population roughly the same as
Palm Beach County.

But suspicion about the machinery, stoked by Democratic lawmakers who paint
dark scenarios about its potential liabilities, runs deep. Representative
Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat, has sued Ms. LePore and other
officials - unsuccessfully so far - because the touch-screen machines do not
provide a paper record of every vote. Ms. LePore said she was not against
paper voting receipts, but thought they were unnecessary and would use them
only if the state authorized them.

Mr. Klein, meanwhile, asked Gov. Jeb Bush to require the 15 counties now
using touch-screen machines to also offer paper ballots as an alternative
for worried voters. But the governor refused, and the usually impassive Ms.
LePore accused Mr. Klein of fear-mongering.

"That is just totally absurd," she said, adding that it was too late to
acquire the necessary equipment and teach poll workers and voters how to use
it. "Every step forward we're taking, we end up getting bumped back two
steps because of elected officials that are going out and predicting doom
and gloom."

Besides overhauling election machinery, Ms. LePore has increased the number
of poll workers and, because of a new state requirement, given them more
training. She has acquired laptop computers and cell phones for all 696
precincts so that, unlike in 2000, poll workers can have voter registration
records at their fingertips and keep in touch with headquarters. In another
change, two phone banks will operate out of Ms. LePore's office on Election
Day to take calls from poll workers and the public.

Yet there are signs that these changes have brought voters little comfort,
the foremost being the high number of absentee ballots requested so far this
year. Palm Beach County received 35,577 requests for next week's primary,
more than three times the 11,472 ballots requested before the 2000 primary.

Ms. LePore said she expected as many as 120,000 absentee ballot requests for
the general election, up from just 54,570 in 2000. She bought two extra
scanners to read absentee ballots, she said, so there should be no backlog.

Her opponent, Mr. Anderson, has raised more money than Ms. LePore, but has
suffered from revelations that the Internal Revenue Service filed liens
against him and that he was behind on child-support payments.

Mr. Anderson does not hesitate to blame Ms. LePore for the travails of 2000;
his Web site says that she "singlehandedly changed the outcome of the
presidential election." She has attributed the problems of that year to
voter error and said that she would "probably" not use a butterfly ballot
again, "knowing what I know now."

As they march toward November, Democrats think they have a potent strategy
in rehashing the chaos of 2000, but admit their approach is unorganized. The
county party has been weakened by internal battles, and its leadership is
fragmented among about 30 Democratic clubs, most based in condominium
complexes for retirees.

Republicans here say they are much more organized than in 2000, with more
money, ground troops and determination. Mr. Dinerstein said Jeb Bush's
popularity here in the 2002 gubernatorial race - he won 43 percent of the
county vote - gave his party new momentum in the Democratic stronghold.

Mr. Dinerstein said that the local chapter of the Republican Jewish
Coalition, a Washington-based group, has helped by lobbying Jewish voters to
support Mr. Bush. It brought Vice President Dick Cheney to Palm Beach County
in May, riling stalwart Jewish Democrats who are painting defections as
betrayal.

Similar tensions were on display one recent afternoon at Valencia Shores, an
upscale retirement community in Lake Worth, when Shellie Kronfeld, 64,
admitted that she was an undecided voter, making her husband gasp. "I wish
Kerry did really move me, but he doesn't," Mrs. Kronfeld, a retired
assistant principal from Brooklyn, said. "I don't think either party has
been terrific."

Yet she is haunted by her belief that she accidentally voted for Mr.
Buchanan in 2000, a victim of the butterfly ballot.

"I let it go until I see all those kids dying in Iraq and think, 'Could we
have made a difference?' " she said.

Mr. and Mrs. Kronfeld said they would vote absentee this year, mostly to
avoid long lines. Though Ms. LePore said the wait would be shorter this time
because the new machines were faster, she also expressed concern about a
potential circus atmosphere outside the polls. What if Michael Moore, who
has vowed to bring his cameras to Florida on Election Day, joined the
throngs of volunteer lawyers and poll watchers whom Ms. LePore expects to
pour into Palm Beach County in search of foul play?

Some poll workers quit after they heard Mr. Moore might come, she said.

"These poor voters may actually have to walk a gantlet just to get in to
vote," she said, "and get discouraged and leave because they just don't want
to deal with it."

But conversations with people like Barbara Katz of Boynton Beach, who said
she voted correctly in 2000 only because friends warned her in advance about
the confusing ballot, suggest that many voters here would walk on broken
glass to get it right this time.

"You can't redo that election, even though many of us do it in our dreams,"
Ms. Katz, 67, said. "They look at this one as their chance to start sleeping
nights again."

Ban on Recounts Struck Down

By The New York Times

MIAMI, Aug. 27 - An administrative law judge in Tallahassee struck down a
new state rule that bans manual recounts in counties that use touch-screen
voting machines, handing a preliminary victory to voting-rights groups.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to overturn the rule in July, saying
it violated a state law that requires recounts in extremely close elections.
State officials say they made the rule because under state law the only
reason for a manual recount is to determine "voter intent" in close races.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda E. Hood said the state might
appeal.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company