Democrats Allege Polling Irregularities
Nov. 8 -- Democrats are looking carefully at ballots cast in Palm Beach County, Fla., where many voters complained today that the ballot was so confusing they accidentally voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
The potential mixup in Palm Beach is just one of many complaints being fielded in Florida, where an exhaustive recount in one of the tightest presidential contests in decades got underway today.
By the slimmest of margins, perhaps a few more than 1,000 votes separated George W. Bush and Gore. That margin falls well within the one half of 1 percent of the vote needed to call for a recount under Florida state law.
Even before the presidential race in Florida became too close to call, and Democrats called for a recount there, party officials said voters were complaining of misinformation, possible tampering and other irregularities in the Sunshine State.
“There have been reports of irregularities,” ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin said. “Florida is a big, sprawling state with a pretty fabled political history in terms of, in some parts of the state, voting irregularities. If it comes down to the question of a mistake in Florida, how close Florida is, and Florida deciding the winner, I think there’s going to be a lot of looking at the process as a whole. The winner of Florida in all likelihood wins this election.”
In fact, there were so many mistakes made, according to Democratic sources in Florida, that more than 19, 000 ballots in Palm Beach County — four percent of the total — were disqualified because they contained punches for more than one presidential candidates.
A senior official in the Gore campaign tells ABCNEWS’ Nightline that given the seriousness of the revelations in Palm Beach County, the campaign is definitely “moving in the direction” of mounting a serious legal challenge.
Buchanan Ballot Blunder?
Democratic Party officials said sample ballots handed to Florida voters by volunteers as they entered the polling places in precincts in Palm Beach listed the candidates in a different order than what voters saw in the voting booths.
The result, they said, was voters who referenced the sample ballots to cast their votes may have voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Gore.
The Democratic National Committee said it started receiving complaints from voters that the actual ballot was very confusing. Basically, voters said, the hole punch for Gore on the ballot was so close to that of Buchanan that many voters weren’t sure who they had voted for.
Pat Buchanan earned 3,407 votes or .8 percent of the vote for the presidency. Statewide, Buchanan won 16,698 or .3 percent of the vote.
Democrats say it would be unusual for Buchanan to get so many votes in this heavily Democratic County, where Gore pulled in 62.2 percent of the votes.
“If you put together all the numbers, how do you explain the aberration?” said Gerald Richman, a former Democratic candidate for Congress and a Palm Beach trial attorney.
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