Newspaper Closer to Ballot Review

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Newspapers Near Court OK for Florida Ballot Review

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Newspapers appeared close to winning the chance to review contested Florida ballots from the U.S. presidential election in an effort to determine whether President-elect George W. Bush received more votes than Democrat Al Gore in the decisive state.

Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis was expected next week to rule in favor of a motion by The Miami Herald and The Palm Beach Post for votes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to be returned to local officials so that independent counts can be conducted, Herald officials said Saturday.

During weeks of legal and political wrangling over the election result judges ordered ballots from the two counties to be transferred to the state capital.

Lewis has given objectors until noon EST Monday to file any complaints. There had been none by early Saturday.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme court ruled to effectively prevent a recount of disputed ballots leaving many Americans in doubt over which candidate received most votes in Florida.

The court's ruling prompted Gore to concede and ended the fight for the state's 25 Electoral College (news - web sites) votes that lifted Bush past the 270 mark needed to win the White House.

In Leon County, Lewis is likely to allow the ballots to be transferred from the Leon County clerk's office in Tallahassee to Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county officials, who will then allow the newspapers to organize reviews,

Steve Uhlfelder, an attorney representing The Herald told Reuters. The Leon County hearing, initiated by The Palm Beach Post, is one of several moves by media including The Herald, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and Time Magazine, to launch a recount in all of Florida's 67 counties.

For five weeks after the Nov. 7 election, backers of Vice President Gore claimed reviewing the ``undervotes'' was necessary to certify those not picked up by machines due to chads not punched all the way through, and also to decide which ballots had no markings for either candidate.

But supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush objected to recounts, charging voter intent cannot legally be determined.

Republicans reasoned the vote count would not be legitimate, with each county applying different standards to determine how a citizen voted.

Mark Seibel, assistant managing editor for The Herald, told Reuters, ``We anticipate we will have a range of figures because the Palm Beach standard and ours will be different. I don't think we're going to come out with one number and say Gore would have gotten 'X' votes and Bush 'Y,' but it's a lingering question, and the process will exist if not to completely answer it, then to partly answer it.''

Douglas Hattaway, a Gore campaign spokesman, told Reuters on Saturday the Democrats would not object to the media recount. ''The ballots are public information,'' he said. ``They have the right to review them.''

The Herald reported a Bush campaign spokesman as saying the Republican Party would also not object to the count.

-- Truth (Train@TheStation.com), December 17, 2000

Answers

The Herald reported a Bush campaign spokesman as saying the Republican Party would also not object to the count.

Oh sure...NOW they don't have any objections! Bastard cheats!

-- Train (Coming@In.com), December 17, 2000.


I can't help wondering what these counts will accomplish, beyond sowing discord for its own sake. Still, I'm curious what these counts will be, and how they will compare depending on who is counting.

Here's a prediction: IF we don't see any "final" counts published by these papers, Bush actually got more votes by their counts. After all, Bush was dubbed the winner, so getting more actual votes isn't "news", is it?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 17, 2000.


I don't see how these counts can have ANY meaning whatsoever for the very same reasons the SCOTUS gave. If there is no uniform standard for counting the "undervotes", "overvotes", hangin', swingin', dented, dimpled or preggers chads, what is the point? No matter what the results of this particular electile dysfunction happen to be, the only result will be further polarization.

Just for informational purposes, in case anyone gives a shit, I voted for neither candidate.

Dan V.

-- Jimmy Splinters (jsplinters@earthlink.net), December 19, 2000.


The best way to do a recount would be to also split the results up into different catagories according to the status of the chad.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/rerecounts001218.htm l

How Will the Unofficial Re-Recounters Count?

Florida lawmakers may not have been able to devise rules for manual recounts in time to affect the election, but now that there are no deadlines, journalists and public advocates are considering all options.

“Our feeling is to do it right, we'd have to do a statewide count,” says Earl Maucker, vice president and editor of the Florida Sun Sentinel. “Then we may break it down -- here are the totals counting the hanging chads, here are the totals counting dimpled chads, counting pregnant chads, and so on. We would try to give the totals some context.”

-- (in@political.news), December 19, 2000.


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