FLORIDA BALLOTS

	January 5, 2000
	Ray Suarez leads a discussion on the recount in Florida.

RAY SUAREZ: And the view from the ground. From ground zero in Florida; Republican State Senator Jim Sebesta is a former supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County - that's the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. He is a member of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections. Susan MacManus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of South Florida. Democratic State Senator Ron Klein, of Delray Beach. Senator Klein was a Gore witness for the recount in Palm Beach County. Well, we just heard from Florida's secretary of state. Professor MacManus, it looks like we're not going to know for sure for a while. SUSAN MacMANUS: No. I think we're in a mode of caution because there's nothing more precious to a democracy than the sanctity of the ballot. And I think both Democratic and Republican officials in Florida, as well as all Floridians, want this to be the best and fairest and most accurate count. RAY SUAREZ: And Senator Sebesta, what options are available to the campaigns at this point? From what the secretary of state said, it sounds like they just have to sit tight at least for a while. STATE SEN. JIM SEBESTA: Yeah, that's exactly right. As the absentee ballots come back from overseas, they will be counted in each of the 67 offices throughout the state of Florida, and we just are in kind of a limbo situation. It's kind of interesting. I was talking to my nephew in Chicago last night, Kevin Conner, and I said, "this sounds just like a John Grisham novel, except that nobody would believe it." So we are just waiting until all these absentee ballots come in and are counted. RAY SUAREZ: Well, Senator, can we shorten that time line any by knowing perhaps how many of those ballots were issued, how many were applied for, how many have come back so far so that at least we have a known universe that we're dealing with here? STATE SEN. JIM SEBESTA: Well, the answers to your questions are: yes, yes, yes, and no. Yes, we know how many were mailed out. Yes, we know where they went. But no, we don't know how many people actually mailed them. People are all over the world literally, and who is to say whether a person who received a ballot took the time to fill it out and mail it back? We just don't know that. RAY SUAREZ: But do we know if any have already been received and counted so that we can compare that number to the number that have been issued? STATE SEN. JIM SEBESTA: Yeah, we do. I'm sorry. I don't know the exact figure. Many of those ballots have come back, and have already been included in the figures. Unfortunately, we don't know for sure how many are yet to be received, so we are in this limbo situation and we just wait till they come back. RAY SUAREZ: Senator Klein, were you a witness in the Palm Beach County area. Tell us what you saw on the recount. STATE SEN. RON KLEIN: Well, what we saw was a relatively smooth recount. It's all done mechanically. It ended up that there were more votes, net votes for Al Gore when it was over. We had witnesses by both the Bush and the Gore teams there to make sure that everything went according to law in terms of all the ballots being tested properly, and that was the case yesterday. I do want to point out something, as I was listening to Mr. Baker give an explanation on the ballots, since I voted in Palm Beach County of course, and heard all day long and have heard from thousands of people since then of the problems, the sample ballot that was published and sent out to people did not have the holes designated on the form. All it had was the arrows, and the other problem-- so in other words, people couldn't tell that there-- that there was a problem in the alignment, just from seeing what the form looked like. And also, when you put the card in the bracket itself, there was another slight misalignment with the way the pages turned. So those two factors really did lead to quite a bit of confusion. And unfortunately, it has just amounted to it appears like thousands of people who were confused, at least on the Presidential piece of the ballot. RAY SUAREZ: It's been reported for some time since the polls closed and the tabulations began, that a large number of votes from your county had to be discarded for double punching. Once they were discarded in the first count, have they been revisited at all? Have they been sequestered or sealed? STATE SEN. RON KLEIN: Well, no. Actually, what happens is the ballots are tabulated as individual election items. In other words, there is a President, there's there is a Vice President, and all the other items are tabulated individually. So by way of example, in the presidential race where there were eight or nine different parties running, we had 19,100 ballots that were double-punched. And that's 4.14% of our total ballots cast in Palm Beach County. That's a massive amount. In the U.S. Senate race, which was laid out differently, it was laid out vertically just like all the other items on our ballot, without any confusion, there were only 3,100 that were double-punched, which was .8%. That seems to indicate that five times the number of people double punched the Presidential one, and we heard that people double-punched for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman or Buchanan. But it's five times the number. And that statistically is a great concern. RAY SUAREZ: Is there precedent for reexamination of balloting like this in the state of Florida? STATE SEN. RON KLEIN: I'm not aware of anything, and I haven't researched this. I've just been, you know, sort of focusing on talking to folks and trying to find out and looking at the over voting, which is what that term is when you double-punch. It seems like we're breaking new ground here, and what's of obvious concern to not only the people of Palm Beach County but the whole state of Florida and the entire country is a consequence of this balloting in Palm Beach County. I can't speak to items that happened in other parts of the state, but seriously, anybody in Palm Beach County, whether they voted for Al Gore or George Bush or Pat Buchanan, there is a legal question of the validity of this ballot. RAY SUAREZ: Reporter: Senator Sebesta, let's hear from you on the Palm Beach County case. STATE SEN. JIM SEBESTA: Well, thank you. And hello to my good friend, Senator Klein. It's nice to see you on camera. There is... I think one of the things you have to keep in mind here is that the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County has the responsibility of laying out the ballot. She did that. She then publishes the ballot and people have the opportunity to review the ballot. As was pointed out in the press conference just a few minutes ago, no one, underline no one, ever brought it to anyone's attention that the butterfly ballot might be confusing to anybody. Now, folks who vote for two people in one race surely they must realize what they're doing. I can't believe... you know, somewhere in this, individual responsibility has to enter into it, but even if you did vote for two people in one race, there is a mechanism under Florida statutes which allows the voter to raise his hand and said, "oops, I goofed. I want another ballot." And people just did not do that. They didn't do it in Palm Beach County, they didn't do it anywhere. If you mess up a ballot, you have the legal authority, the legal right to ask for another ballot right there in the polling place. Now, obviously, you can't leave the polling place and then say, "gosh, I think I made a mistake." You have to do it in the polling place, and that's where with the individual responsibility comes in. And I think we are overlooking that a great deal here. RAY SUAREZ: Professor MacManus, let's turn back to you. Given what you know about Florida electoral law and what courts have ruled in the recent past, as we move forward now-- the secretary of state is running the clock till next Tuesday on the recount, we don't know exactly when the absentee votes will be fully tabulated-- is there a sustainable case in court to reexamine what happened in this particular Florida county? SUSAN MacMANUS: Well, I'm not an attorney, and I really can't address that. But what I can say is that, for many people in Florida who study elections, it's very clear that we need to reexamine the whole process of voting and ballot formats and punch card ballots and all that. We haven't paid a lot of attention to it, and as our population ages, people's ability to use a punch card varies somewhat. And we're seeing the consequences of that. We need to do more studies of ways to make ballots accessible and friendly to older voters and also people with disabilities. RAY SUAREZ: In the recent past, Miami had a re-election and had the results of an election thrown out. Does your state tend to be... set a high bar for reexamination of election results, or one that may be breached in a case like this? SUSAN MacMANUS: Well, we've never had a case like this. This is just path-breaking, and I'm not sure that I'm the one to answer that question because I'm not an attorney. And right now, we have the best legal minds in America down here monitoring this situation for both parties. And really, that's a good thing for America because we need to make sure that this election is valid and that people believe in the sanctity of their ballot. STATE SEN. RON KLEIN: Ray, would I like to point out something also. RAY SUAREZ: Very quickly, Senator. STATE SEN. RON KLEIN: Just very quickly. There are two is statutory provisions, one of which says the X or the mark has to be to the right of the name, and that did not occur on half of the ballot on the President's side. And secondly, the ballot of Al Gore was third, as opposed to second. Pat Buchanan was second. So there are some legal questions here about whether the validity of this ballot is constitutional or at least is statutory. RAY SUAREZ: Well, as we heard Chairman Daley say earlier, they are going to support court cases in this matter. We're going to have to end it there. Professors, Senators, thank you very much.