Here is a competing version of the original Miami Herald story from April 4, 2001 on the Florida recount. It seems to present the same info as from this version of the story living in the Google cache, but the different scenarios get more emphasis.
Miami Herald, The (FL)
April 4, 2001
REVIEW SHOWS BALLOTS SAY BUSH BUT
GORE BACKERS HAVE SOME POINTS TO ARGUE
Author: MARTIN MERZER, [email protected]
Edition: Final
Section: Front
Page: 1A
Index Terms:
US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FLORIDA VOTING MACHINE DEFECT RECOUNT MH
REPORT RESULTS STATISTICS WINNER BUSH
Estimated printed pages: 14
Article Text:
The Herald's examination of votes cast in all 67
Florida counties projects Gore falling further behind if the recount
Democrats advocated had continued.
Republican George W. Bush's victory in Florida, which gave him the White
House, almost certainly would have endured even if a recount stopped by the
U.S. Supreme Court had been allowed to go forward.
In fact, a comprehensive review of 64,248 ballots in
all 67 Florida counties by The Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder,
in partnership with USA Today, found that Bush's slender margin of 537 votes
would have tripled to 1,665 votes under the generous counting standards
advocated by Democrat Al Gore.
The newspapers' ballot review was conducted by the
public accounting firm BDO Seidman, LLP. It was designed to answer a question
asked by many Americans and certain to be examined by historians:
What would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court
had not halted the sweeping r! ecount of undervotes - ballots without
presidential votes detected by counting machines - ordered by the Florida
Supreme Court on Dec. 8, a month after the November election?
The answer: under almost all scenarios, Bush still
would have won.
Indeed, in one of the great ironies of the bitter
2000 election, Bush's lead would have vanished only if the recount had been
conducted under severely restrictive standards advocated by some Republicans.
There is some ammunition in the review for Gore
supporters - though it requires calling into question the manual recounts in
Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The review found that canvassing boards in those
counties discarded hundreds of ballots that bore marks no different from
those on scores of ballots that were accepted as valid presidential votes.
Had those ballots instead been counted as valid
votes, allowing dimples, pinpricks and hanging chads, Gore would be in the White
House today.
VAL! IDATION CLAIMED
The multiple layers of The Herald's findings al
lowed both parties to claim validation Tuesday of their positions during the
protracted election dispute.
Speaking for the Republicans, former Montana Gov.
Marc Racicot expressed satisfaction with the broad results of the review, but
rejected any suggestion that additional ballots could have been salvaged and
the outcome might have changed.
``We have a problem with efforts by different people
in different places at different times trying to discern what other people
really meant to do,'' Racicot said.
``The American people knew it was a close election.
They accepted the fact that President Bush won under any reasonable scenario.
The decision made by the American people now is numerically confirmed by The
Herald and its partners.''
At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer said:
``The president believes, just as the American people do, that this election
was settled months ago. The voters spoke, and George W. Bush won.''
Bob Poe, chairman ! of Florida's Democratic Party,
said The Herald's review shows that many official tallies were incomplete and
inaccurate.
``My feeling is still that more people went to the
polls to vote for Al Gore than went to vote for George W. Bush, and that some
really bad things happened,'' Poe said. ``This tells us that the system has
some major flaws that need to be improved. We cannot continue to have this
kind of ambiguity in an election.''
Said Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign
spokesman: ``If you count every vote, Gore wins. This study confirms that
Florida's election system failed the voters.''
The Herald's findings underscore the agonizing
closeness of last fall's presidential election and the vital importance of -
and tumultuous debates over - the various standards that can be employed to
gauge punch-card ballots.
Though this portion of the project examined only
undervotes, The Herald, Knight Ridder, several other Florida newspapers and
USA Toda! y also are conducting a full review of at least 110,000 overvotes -
ba llots for which machines recorded more than one presidential candidate.
That project should be concluded within a month, but
those results will not affect the conclusions of the undercount review
because the Florida Supreme Court excluded overvotes from its sweeping
recount.
In addition, a group of national news organizations
and Florida newspapers has hired a University of Chicago research center to
conduct a statewide survey of undervotes and overvotes. That effort is still
underway.
Regardless of the ballot reviews, debate is likely
to continue over the outcome of last year's presidential election, the
closest in 124 years.
While the ballot reviews accentuate how imprecise
numbers released on Election Night can be, election officials nationwide say
the possibility of human error is so great that it is almost impossible to
conduct a mistake-free election.
That imprecision is not an issue, they say, except
when the results are extremely cl! ose - as they were in Florida.
KEY FINDINGS
Here's what The Herald's ballot review found:
* Under the Florida Supreme Court order, which
exempted counties where manual counts had already taken place, Bush would
have added 1,128 votes to his official 537-vote lead - if every dimple,
pinprick or hanging chad on a punch-card ballot is considered a valid vote.
That would have yielded a final margin of 1,665 votes.
His final lead would have fallen to 884 if dimples
were counted as presidential votes only on ballots that had dimples in other
races.
His lead would have dwindled to 363 if votes were
counted only when a punch-card chad was detached by at least two corners,
perhaps the most common standard applied nationally.
And his margin of victory would have disappeared,
replaced by a Gore lead of only three votes, if only clean punches were
accepted.
That nearly invisible Gore advantage - 0.00005
percent of the 5.9 million votes c! ast by Floridians - is so tiny that it
leaves the outcome in question. In addition, it is produced by a highly
unlikely scenario.
Like the all-inclusive standard, the severely
restrictive clean-punch standard is rarely employed. Among two dozen states
that impose standards on manual recounts of undervotes, only Indiana insists
on cleanly punched chads.
Nevertheless, many Republicans have advocated that
standard since The Herald's ballot review began more than three months ago.
``The context in which we viewed this entire recount
is that, the election is over [and] there is only one legal standard for a
vote, the standard that was in place when people went in to vote, and that
was a clear punch,'' Portia Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of
Florida, recently told The Herald.
* Contrary to popular belief, mismarks for Gore were
less likely than mismarks for Bush in punch-card counties. Marks of some type
were found in the Bush position on one ballot for every 172 valid Bush
punch-card votes; marks in the ! Gore position were found on one ballot for
every 181 valid Gore punch-card votes.
But the opposite was true in optical scan counties.
Marks were found in the Gore position on one ballot for every 1,489 valid
Gore optical-scan votes; marks in the Bush position were found on one ballot
for every 2,600 valid Bush optical-scan votes.
* More specifically, dimples were only slightly more
likely to appear in the Gore position than in the Bush position. Statewide,
10,745 dimples were found in chads assigned to Gore and 10,004 dimples were
found on chads assigned to Bush, a nearly equal result.
This suggests that dimpled punch-card ballots were
related more to machine failure, which affects everyone equally, than to
human error, which might disproportionately affect inexperienced voters.
* Optical-scan balloting does not solve the problem
of discarded ballots.
While the sheer number of problem ballots was far
higher in punch-card counties, 2,119 di! scernible presidential votes were
left untabulated in counties that us e optical-scan systems. Gore would have
received 1,179 of those votes; Bush would have received 860.
UNCOUNTED VOTES
The large number of seemingly valid votes that went
uncounted suggests that election reform may need to go beyond the replacement
of punch-card systems with optical-scan systems.
For example, Florida law says no ballot may be
discarded if the intent of the voter is clear. But the law is less definitive
concerning the obligations of canvassing boards to examine discarded ballots
to determine if the intent of voters can be ascertained.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that
canvassing boards must examine ``damaged or defective'' ballots for voter
intent and further defined the term ``defective ballot'' as ``a ballot which
is marked in a manner such that it cannot be read by a scanner.''
Though some canvassing boards in optical-scan
counties conducted such reviews on Election Night, most boards around the
state did not.
!
THOUSANDS OF VOTES
Had all canvassing boards in all counties examined
all undervotes, thousands of votes would have been salvaged in Broward
County, Palm Beach County and elsewhere long before the election dispute
landed in court - and the outcome might have been different, The Herald
found.
In that scenario, under the most inclusive standard,
Gore might have won Florida's election - and the White House - by 393 votes,
The Herald found. If dimples were counted as votes only when other races were
dimpled, Gore would have won by 299 votes.
But if ballots were counted as votes only when a
chad was detached by at least two corners (the standard most commonly used
nationally), Bush would have won by 352 votes.
The ballot review also accentuated the latitude
local elections officials enjoy under state law to establish standards and
practices that can differ from those employed in other counties.
For example, nearly all optical-scan systems ! can
alert voters to errors on their ballots - if scanners are deployed in each
precinct.
But Herald reviewers found that some elections
officials intentionally don't use the scanning equipment's full capabilities.
The result: voters in some counties are able to correct fewer errors than
voters in other counties.
One consequence of this latitude was clear in
Escambia County, where vote tabulating equipment was programmed to flag as
undervotes only those ballots on which no votes were apparent anywhere. Few
other counties adhere to that policy.
When Escambia was ordered by the Florida Supreme
Court to recount its undervotes, it only examined ballots that fit that limited
definition - a total of 16. Nine votes went to Gore and six went to Bush, a
net gain of three for Gore.
But when The Herald insisted that Escambia identify
ballots where no votes were tabulated specifically in the presidential race,
the county presented 677 ballots for inspection. Of those, 20 were deemed to
be votes for Bush and 45 were deemed to be ! votes for Gore - a net gain of
25 for the former vice-president.
ACCESS REQUESTED
The Herald requested access to undervotes in all 67
Florida counties on Dec. 13, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed
the Florida court and terminated the official undervote recount.
The nation's highest court said the lack of a
consistent statewide standard for judging ballots raised constitutional
issues. It declined to give Florida time to develop such a standard,
effectively handing the state's 25 electoral votes and the White House to
Bush.
The Herald's requests cited the Florida Public
Records Law, which makes ballots subject to public examination. The newspaper
later retained BDO Seidman, LLP, to inspect the ballots.
The comprehensive review of undervotes began on Dec.
18 in Broward County, and teams of accountants and reporters soon visited all
67 counties. The last undervote was inspected March 13 in Hamilton County.
Under its agreeme! nt with The Herald, BDO's
accountants noted what kind of mark was pres ent on each ballot and the
mark's location, then totaled the marks of various kinds and reported them to
The Herald. But BDO made no effort to determine voter intent or whether a
mark on a ballot was a legally valid vote.
Reporters from The Herald, other Knight Ridder
newspapers and USA Today also reviewed every undervote ballot and made
separate and independent assessments of their characteristics. That effort was
designed as a statistical check of variation between observers, but was not
considered in the tabulations BDO reported.
Of the 64,248 ballots inspected by BDO, only 42,897
came from precincts affected by the Florida Supreme Court order or from
counties that did not complete the recount before the U.S. Supreme Court
issued its stay.
The state court specifically excluded from the
statewide recount Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and 139 precincts in
Miami-Dade where manual recounts already had been conducted. In addition,
three counties - Escambia,! Manatee and Madison - completed the count before
the U.S. Supreme Court froze the process. Another, Hamilton County, reported
that it had no undervotes, although that proved untrue when The Herald
inspected its ballots.
Of the 42,897 ballots, no marks for president were
found on 20,861. These were true undervotes - with no evidence of any attempt
to vote for president.
Another 861 ballots showed marks for write-in
candidates or for presidential candidates other than Bush or Gore, and 2,912
had marks in ballot locations that were not assigned to candidates.
NOT TABULATED
Not included in the tabulation were 1,512 ballots that
BDO determined had marks for more than one presidential candidate. State law
specifically prohibits the tabulation of ballots with marks for more
candidates than are to be elected to the office.
That left 9,114 ballots with marks or write-in
notations that might, under the most permissive standard, be interpreted as
vo! tes for Bush. And it left 7,637 ballots that bore marks that, under th at
same standard, might be interpreted as votes for Gore.
To recreate the conditions that existed at the time
of the court's order, The Herald accepted the official results of the recount
in Escambia, Madison and Manatee - an additional 20 votes for Bush and 27 for
Gore - and Hamilton's claim of no undervotes.
That brought the Bush total to 9,134 and the Gore
total to 7,664.
The Herald then followed the court's order, adding
174 votes to Gore's total as the net gain from Palm Beach County's official
recount. It also added 168 votes to Gore's total as the net gain from the 139
Miami-Dade precincts that had been recounted manually.
That left Gore with a potential total after the
recount of 8,006, under the most permissive standard.
The Herald then added 537 - Bush's statewide lead at
the time the Florida court acted - to Bush's result, leaving him with a total
of 9,671 - 1,665 more than Gore.
The Herald's statewide review adds to a gro! wing
body of material that brings the outcome of the disputed election into
sharper focus.
Five weeks ago, for instance, The Herald reported
that if Secretary of State Katherine Harris had allowed South Florida
counties to complete manual recounts before certifying the election, Bush
likely would have won the presidency outright - ending the dispute before the
Florida Supreme Court ordered the recount of undervotes.
Last month, The Palm Beach Post reported in some
detail on the results in Palm Beach County. Among other things, it found that
5,062 residents of that county voted for three or more candidates for
president, an indication of voter inexperience.
The Palm Beach Post also found, like The Herald,
that hundreds of potential votes for Gore were not counted.
Of course, regardless of the undervote reviews, only
one thing is truly clear: Precise numbers released on Election Night mask a
world of imprecision and chaos.
Responding to Hera! ld requests for undervotes, only
eight of Florida's 67 counties were a ble to produce for inspection the exact
number they reported on Election Night. Elsewhere, there is no way to know
whether the Election Night figure, the number of ballots actually inspected,
or some other number is correct.
At one point, Pasco County Supervisor of Elections
Kurt Browning testified during a hearing that multiple machine recounts in
his county produced a different number of undervotes each time.
Nov. 8: 1,776. Dec. 9: 1,712. Feb 5: 1,744.
But it was not machine sorting alone that proved
inaccurate. In Duval County, elections officials - acting under court order -
hand-sorted the county's 291,000 ballots in search of the 4,967 undervotes
they had reported on Election Night.
They ended up delivering 5,106 ballots for
inspection by The Herald.
That's close, but it also raises the possibility
that some of those ballots were actually tabulated in the Election Night
machine count.
On the other hand, BDO determined that only! 4,880 qualified
as undervotes. The other 226 bore marks for at least two presidential
candidates, apparent overvotes.
This review did not attempt to inspect overvotes.
Florida's Supreme Court order specifically called for the recounting only of
undervote ballots, leaving the estimated 110,000 overvotes unaffected.
But Herald reviewers saw numerous overvotes, and it
became clear that many could have been declared valid votes - if they had
been examined in time.
For instance, in some counties that use optical
scanning equipment, people managed to vote for Gore and then again for his
running mate, Joseph Lieberman, or for Bush and then again for his running
mate, Richard Cheney.
Throughout the state, many people voted for Bush or
Gore - and then did so again in the write-in category.
All such votes were rejected by machines as
overvotes. However, many elections supervisors agree that some of those votes
could have been rehabilitated through ! manual recounts by canvassing boards
employing nothing more than commo n sense.
``It's sad,'' said Levy County Elections Supervisor
Connie Asbell. ``These are people who really wanted to vote for president.''
EXAMINING THE NUMBERS
The Herald applied the BDO Seidman ballot review results to several scenarios
to project the possible impact of a statewide recount on November's election.
SCENARIO 1: Florida Supreme Court Order
The Florida Supreme Court on Dec. 8 ordered that all
undervote ballots be counted in counties that had not already conducted a
hand recount. The court also ordered that the secretary of state's office
include 174 net votes from Palm Beach and 168 net votes from a partial
recount in Miami-Dade be added to Gore's certified total. At the time, Bush
was leading by 537 votes.
The recount order was halted the next day by the
U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the Florida court's order
violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
To see how the election might ! have been affected
had the Florida court's order not been stopped, The Herald considered ballots
only in counties where manual recounts had not been completed. That meant
excluding review results from Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and portions of
Miami-Dade County.
The Herald also excluded the results of its review
in three counties - Escambia, Manatee and Madison - that had completed the
state-court-mandated recount before the U.S. Supreme Court acted. In
addition, ballots reviewed in Hamilton County were not included because
officials there had said they had no undervotes at the time of the court
rulings.
The Herald applied three standards in computing
this: a loose standard where every dimple, hanging chad and pinprick was a
vote, a tougher standard where a dimple counted only if the ballot had other
dimples onit, and a still tougher standard where a ballot had to have chads
detached by at least two corners to count as a vote. In all three instances,
Bush wo! uld have been victorious.
STRENGTH - This is as close an approx imation as
possible to the conditions when the Florida court order was issued.
WEAKNESS - There is no way to be certain how
canvassing boards in each county would have judged each ballot.
THE NUMBERS
Bush Gore
9,134 7,664
537 (lead) 174 - Palm Beach County
168 - Miami-Dade ballots
9,672 8,006
Bush margin - 1,665
Palm Beach standard
Bush Gore
5,877 5,188
+ 537 +174
+168
6,415 5,531
Bush margin - 884
2-corner chad standard
Bush Gore
1,749 1,581
+ 537 +174
+168
2,286 1,923
Bush margin - 363
The Clean Punch Scenario
There is one scenario that would have led to a Gore
victory - though it was unlikely. That would have happened if the precincts
affected by the Florida Supreme Court order had been counted with only cle!
an punches counting in the punch card counties.
Why is it so unlikely? Because the application of
that standard only in the affected precincts would have required the
Miami-Dade canvassing board to switch standards in the middle of its count.
Nevertheless, applying the standard shows the irony
of the insistence by some Reublicans that only clean punches be counted. In
the counties to be counted under the state court order, Bush actually
benefited from the inclusion of dimples, pinpricks and hanging chads.
The scenario also assumes that the results in
optical scan counties would have remained the same, since markings for
president on those ballots are more obvious.
The Numbers
Bush Gore
988 1,186
+ 537 +174
+168
1,525 1,528
Gore wins by 8.
The Statewide Standard
What if the canvassing boards in all 67 counties had
reviewed their undervote ballots immediately afte! r the last state-mandated
machine tabulation Nov. 8? Such a review pro bably is required by state law,
but few canvassing boards conduct one.
But such a review would have avoided court fights.
And using The Herald ballot review allows all ballots to be judged by the
same standard.
To accomplish this, The Herald excluded no counties
where it had inspected ballots. It also used as it's starting point the final
machine recount, which had given Bush a lead of 300 votes. It then also added
to the Bush total 630 votes, which was the margin of overseas absentee
ballots that Bush won when those ballots were open Nov. 17.
STRENGTH: This also would have satisifed the feeling
of the minority of the U.S. Supreme Court who felt Florida should have been
given time to devise a statewide standard for recounts.
WEAKNESS: A ballot review such as this might have
included an unknown number of overvote ballots, where tabulation machines saw
two votes or more for president. In some counties, a review of those ballots
- not part of this re! view of undervotes - have found many were in fact
valid votes. Those ballots would certainly affect totals.
The Numbers
Bush Gore
13,055 14,378
+ 300
+ 630
13,985 14,378
Gore margin - 393
Palm Beach standard
Bush Gore
6,644 8,873
+300
+630
8,574 8,873
Gore margin - 299 votes
2-corner chad
Bush Gore
2,169 2,747
+ 300
+ 630
3,099 2,7487
Bush margin - 352
HIRAM HENRIQUEZ/HERALD STAFF
RECOUNT STAFF
The following Herald staff writers contributed to these reports:
Lila Arzua, Steve Bousquet, Tyler Bridges, Paul Brinkley-Rogers, Lesley
Clark, Tina Cummings, Daniel de Vise, Anabelle de Gale, Geoff Dougherty, Amy
Driscoll, Lisa Fuss, Jasmine Kripalani, Larry Lebowitz, Phil Long, Beth
Reinhard, Shari Rudavsky, Charles Savage, Mark Silva and Andres! Viglucci.
HERALD REPORT
The Miami Herald staff has prepared a book about Florida's 2000 presidental
election, to be published in early May by St. Martin's Press.
Titled The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held
Hostage, the book provides the most detailed account yet of an election
process that went awry and include the full results of the ballot review
conducted by the accounting firm BDO Seidman, LLP.
It will be available wherever books are sold, and
now can be ordered in advance from The Miami Herald's HeraldStore.
HeraldStore can be found on the World Wide Web at www.heraldstore.com or
contacted Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at:
* Miami-Dade: 305-376-3719
* Broward: 954-764-7026 ext 3719
* From elsewhere toll-free: 1-877-242-0001
Caption:
WALTER MICHOT/HERALD STAFFLOOKING CAREFULLY: Herald reporter Phil Long and
auditor Elena Chari examine a questionable ballot that was cast for the Nov.
7 presidential election in Duval County. The ballot is held by a municipal
employee.
WALTER MICHOT/HERALD STAFFIN REVIEW: Duval County's director of operations,
Robert Phillips, and ballot checkers Joyce Roland and Zerelda Thomas, left,
work amid a camera-produced swirl.
WALTER MICHOT/HERALD STAFFTAKING STUDIOUS LOOKS: In Duval County, from left,
are auditor Elena Stetsenko, Herald reporter Daniel de Vise, Republican
observer Marc Ross, auditor Elena Chari, Herald reporter Phil Long and
municipal employee Joyce Roland.
WALTER MICHOT/HERALD STAFFREADY TO MOVE: Duval's director of operations,
Robert Phillips, loads a cart with ballots that were stored in a secure area.
They were then rolled out to the site of the review.
WALTER MICHOT/HERALD STAFF LEGAL ACTION: At left, Mark Seibel, The Herald's !
managing editor/news, studies paperwork while waiting for a judge in
Jacksonville. Below, a stack of ballots.color photo: Phil Long and Elena
Chari examine a questionable
ballot (a), George W. Bush (a), Al Gore (a); photo: Robert Phillips and Joyce
Roland and Zeralda Thomas work amid a camera-produced swirl (a), Elena
Stetsenko and Daniel de Vise and Marc Ross and Elena Chari and Phil Long and
Joyce Roland examine ballots (a), Mark Seibel studies paperwork in
Jacksonville (a), A stack of ballots (a), Robert Phillips loads a cart with
ballots (a)
Memo:
WHO WON?/A HERALD REPORT
Copyright (c) 2001 The Miami Herald
Record Number: 0104060072
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