Reno closes gap to 5,685, but probably will fall short

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By John Holland, Diana Marrero and Christy McKerney Sun-Sentinel Posted September 16 2002

Miami-Dade County continued finding votes on Sunday even as Broward's tally remained stable and Janet Reno's hopes of beating Bill McBride for the Democratic nomination for governor seemed to fade.

By Sunday evening, officials from both campaigns confirmed that the latest tallies in Miami-Dade had given Reno a net gain of 2,511 votes. But McBride still held a 5,685-vote lead, an advantage that may be difficult for Reno to overcome.

The former U.S. attorney general's best hopes now rest in more than 265 Miami-Dade voting machines that still haven't been examined. Because many of those machines were not used on election day, however, the prospect of finding more uncounted votes inside them may be slim, officials said.

"They don't expect there to be many more," Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas said late Sunday.

Reno said she will not contest the election no matter how close the vote when counties send their final numbers to the state on Tuesday, and the results are certified on Wednesday.

"It's almost certain that Bill will wind up with more votes than Janet Reno," said Alan Stonecipher, McBride's spokesman. "We hope closure comes Tuesday."

In Miami-Dade, the revised numbers came after a review of problems in more than 80 precincts that Reno had called questionable.

In Broward County, Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant took the day off. Her workers continued checking machines and trying to come up with a final vote count. Office spokesman Rick Riley wouldn't provide vote totals but said he didn't anticipate drastic changes to the numbers submitted to the state on Thursday.

"We're doing a reconciliation of the machines, our basic post-election checklist of making sure everything matches," Riley said. "We're not going to release any vote totals, but in terms of data or discrepancies, we don't see any problems and don't anticipate any."

Oliphant's office gave similar assurances in the days leading up to Tuesday's primary. Then election day arrived, and with it reports of polls not opening on time, poorly trained workers and general disarray at many precincts.

Oliphant went into a defensive mode, leading Gov. Jeb Bush to wonder publicly whether she should be fired.

In Miami-Dade, Leahy faced similar problems and questions about his performance, leading many state officials to lump the two counties together as what Secretary of State Jim Smith called, "embarrassments" to the state.

Five days after the final votes were cast, a look at the problems facing both counties show many similarities -- and a few glaring differences -- in the way the elections and the ensuing controversies were handled.

After the 2000 presidential election showed deep flaws in the voting systems of Broward and Miami-Dade, both counties spent millions of dollars on new touch screen voting devices designed to eliminate paper ballots and ensure an accurate vote count.

Broward County received the new machines in January, and Miami-Dade did

not recieve all of its machines until June. Each county gave workers far

less training than other Florida counties, and neither conducted

extensive practice runs favored by other counties around the state.

"As this evolves, perhaps we didn't have as much of a malfunction problem as a training problem," Secretary of State Jim Smith said.

There were also some basic problems that should have been easy to fix. Smith said he talked with a poll worker in Miami-Dade where 13 machines were being plugged with extension cords and continued to blow fuses on Tuesday.

"And this worker had a two-hour training session which she said was mostly a video presentation," he said. Poll worker training "by a live body who can answer their questions" and the logistics of having machines in place and up and running are "absolutely essential" Smith said to avoid a repeat of problems in the November general election.

Another problem was polls not opening on time. In both counties, workers arrived too late to activate all of the machines to have them running in time for the 7 a.m. election kickoff.

Simple mathematics would show that if it took 6 minutes to fully load each individual machine at a ten machine precinct and then another 23 minutes to load the special talking machines for the sight-impaired, poll workers cannot show up at 6 a.m. for a 7 a.m. opening.

"These are the kind of logistical questions that need to be worked out," Smith said Sunday. "We have time to do that, and if the supervisors need help, I beg and plead with them to ask for that help. There's a lot of talent in both of those counties that can get this done."

"I expressed concern two years ago that the leap to touch screen technology might be too far ahead for the general public," said Smith, whose preference was for the optical scanners used in many Florida counties.

Perhaps the biggest cause of the problems in Miami-Dade was a late change on the wording of a ballot question in Miami-Dade, said Russ Klenet of ES&S, the company that sold the voting machines to both counties. He said Miami-Dade officials had to change ballot cards on more than 3,500 machines in the final days before the primaries, leading to installation mistakes that kept machines from opening properly.

"We had to reprogram the existing flashcards out at the polling places instead of at the warehouse, where the work is supposed to be done," Klenet said. "Obviously, not all of it was done right. We had cards inserted upside done, some jammed, that type of thing.

"That's what kept the machines from starting on time, and that's why they had the long lines in Miami-Dade," Klenet said.

In Broward, Klenet, Smith and other elected officials laid the blame

squarely on Oliphant. Besides a shortage of poll workers, she didn't

tell voter about changes in precincts and didn't have backup plans in

case things went awry, they said.

Besides a shortage of poll workers, she didn't tell voters about changes in precincts and didn't have backup plans in case things went awry, they said.

Perhaps the biggest differences came in communication and taking responsibility for the problems, Smith said.

While Oliphant barely spoke to the voters, blamed others for the problems and didn't offer any public explanations, Leahy held regular news conferences, kept Smith and Bush updated on the situation and worked long hours to straighten things out.

Sunday he said he thought he was prepared but was obviously wrong.

"We had almost 100 people in the field, which is far more than we had before," he said. "Before election day it sounded like a reasonable plan."

Staff Writers Peter Bernard and Jonathon King and Orlando Sentinel staff writers Maya Bell and Bob Mahlburg contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2002

Answers

[I wonder what they promised her??? Atty Gen of Fla?]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Posted on Mon, Sep. 16, 2002 Reno won't fight in court

Campaign claims 2,500 more votes as count goes on

BY PETER WALLSTEN AND LESLEY CLARK pwallsten@herald.com

Even if a final count shows Janet Reno losing to Bill McBride by a single vote in the race to be the Democratic nominee for governor, Reno will concede defeat rather than pursue a legal challenge, her campaign said Sunday.

The announcement is a departure from the campaign's previous position that it might sue, depending on how much the margin shrinks as Miami- Dade County officials recheck hundreds of voting machines.

As of late Sunday, Reno campaign officials said she had gained 2,511 votes on McBride, cutting his lead to 5,685, on the basis of Miami- Dade elections officials' examination of 88 precincts cited by the campaign for uncounted votes.

That new margin, which Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor David Leahy declined to confirm, falls well within 0.5 percent of the total vote, the legal limit to automatically trigger a statewide recount. Last Thursday -- when the margin stood at 0.6 percent -- was the deadline, however, for the state elections canvassing board to initiate a recount. There is no provision in the law for new numbers to trigger an automatic recount, meaning candidates have to mount a legal challenge.

Sunday marked the first time that Reno's lawyers acknowledged she would not try to force the canvassing board's hand, sending the most concrete signal yet that the Democratic nominee to face Gov. Jeb Bush will likely be known conclusively as early as Tuesday night.

''We're going to do what is best for the state of Florida, the Democratic voters of Florida and the targeted goal of beating Jeb Bush,'' said Alan Greer, a leading lawyer for Reno's campaign. ``We're not going to give [Bush] a free ride while the Democrats spend weeks if not months fighting in court.''

The McBride campaign expressed relief, but spokesman Alan Stonecipher said McBride has believed all along he would emerge as the nominee.

''It's what he expected,'' Stonecipher said. ``We're pleased that their attitude seems to be that after the Miami-Dade votes are counted, the state will certify and we can get on with the general election, get on with our common goal, which is beating Jeb Bush.''

It is not clear how many more uncounted votes exist in Miami-Dade County, and whether there are enough to give Reno a chance of winning.

Leahy told reporters Sunday that the elections office has collected 265 machines from precincts from which votes had not yet been harvested. But Leahy said that many of those machines might contain no additional votes at all.

In Broward County, election workers who were double-checking the machines used in the primary found an estimated 200 votes that were not counted Tuesday.

Of those votes, election workers said 137 came from Precinct 32X in Pembroke Pines, which registered no votes Tuesday.

The precinct was among 247 that Janet Reno's gubernatorial campaign had asked the county to review either because turnout was unexpectedly low or because no votes were recorded.

Broward election officials declined to be more specific on the total number of precincts reviewed or the number of new votes discovered until Tuesday, when they will recalculate the results for the three- member canvassing board.

CONFIDENT OF WIN

Stonecipher said the McBride campaign is confident there aren't enough votes for Reno to win.

''I can't see anywhere in reality where that would happen,'' he said. ``We don't think there's the votes out there.''

While the canvassing board initially certified McBride the winner last week and rejected Reno's recount request, Secretary of State Jim Smith has said that Reno would be declared the winner if new results from Miami-Dade and Broward counties put her on top by the deadline of 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Reno campaign officials said they would take the nomination to court only if a final tally of Miami-Dade and Broward votes gives Reno the lead and the canvassing board still certifies McBride the winner.

''That's about as egregious as it gets,'' campaign manager Mo Elleithee said.

Barring that, Elleithee said, if McBride is declared the winner -- even by the slimmest of margins -- ``Bill McBride will be the nominee and Janet Reno will be his biggest supporter.''

Both candidates have walked a fine political line since the Tuesday election, with Reno saying she wants every vote counted and McBride pressing Democrats to unite behind his candidacy to finally challenge Bush.

Quietly, however, tensions have heightened between the two camps, with McBride backers worrying that Reno is dividing the party and Reno loyalists questioning McBride's haste to declare victory before the votes are counted.

On Sunday, Reno was greeted with standing ovations and thunderous applause at one of Miami's cornerstone black churches, New Shiloh Missionary Baptist, when the Rev. D.L. Powell welcomed her as ``the former U.S. attorney general and still candidate for governor.''

POLITICAL FEEL

Despite the campaign's suggestion that she did not want to prolong the race, Reno's visit had the feel of a political event. A news release announcing her trip to the church brought three television cameras and several reporters. The pastor explained from the pulpit that the campaign had asked whether Reno could address the congregation.

Reno, who stayed for the entire 2 ½-hour service, told the congregation that she came to thank them for their help.

''I came simply to say thank you and God bless you,'' said Reno, speaking in the same church where she was cheered on election eve last week. ``These moments in this church in these last weeks will be moments I will never forget.''

Reno's church visit offered more evidence that some in South Florida's black community are especially angered by the glitches that plagued last week's election.

ECHO OF 2000 VOTE

Blacks were particularly frustrated after the 2000 presidential election, when they turned out in record numbers to vote for Al Gore but George W. Bush won. This year, blacks were a critical component of Reno's base.

Tuesday, many precincts in largely black areas opened late because of malfunctioning voting machines and other problems. As part of a post- nomination effort to blame Bush for a failed election overhaul law, Reno's campaign is collecting evidence of everything from machine glitches to polling places opening late.

''So we know we're in Florida and we have our own voting thing going on,'' Powell said. ``I want to recognize the class with which Ms. Reno has approached this thing.''

The Rev. Willie Sims, president of the African American Council of Christian Clergy, said the group was holding a meeting today to discuss the crisis.

''Our phones have not stopped ringing from people who could not vote for Ms. Reno who were turned away or left in frustration,'' Sims said.

Today, some Broward County Democrats are organizing a ''Count Every Vote'' protest near City Hall in Fort Lauderdale.

An e-mail from the organizer, Broward Democratic Executive Committee member Bill Rettinger, said the demonstration ``is being put together to draw attention to our belief that, just as in 2000, again every vote hasn't been counted and needs to be, and to also show our support for Janet Reno as we all know that she really did win this primary.''

A later version of the e-mail was changed to remove the reference to Reno and instead say that the protest would show support for the party and demonstrate ``that we are unified in our determination to beat Jeb Bush on November 5th!''

All of the frustration could be harmful for McBride if he finally wins the nomination. He would need the entire base of Reno support to turn out in November to have a chance of beating Bush.

Some Shiloh congregants said Sunday they would back McBride if he wins.

''We want anybody but Bush,'' Sims said. ``Even a dead dog.''

Even as both campaigns take pains to insist that there is party unity buried beneath the standoff that is playing out in public view, the campaigns' differing interpretations of preliminary results illustrate residual strains.

At first, the Reno campaign announced it had cut more than 3,500 votes from the 8,100-vote lead McBride had before the weekend. McBride's campaign insisted, correctly as it turned out, that that was far too much.

IN CHURCH

Despite the tension between the two camps -- Stonecipher noted that McBride, too, attended church Sunday, ''though we failed to put out a press release about it,'' Stonecipher predicted that the two sides will come together.

''It's a family feud, and once you get past that, everybody puts that stuff aside and goes forward together, and I think that's what will happen here,'' he said.

Some McBride supporters said they will urge him to appear this week in South Florida with Reno.

Herald staff writers Carolyn Salazar and Erica Bolstad contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2002


We can only hope that she'll fall short. She does seem to be getting votes. Grrrr. I see that Florida hasn't stopped the dead from voting yet. ;)

Honestly, I cannot believe that this particular election is this close.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2002


Nothing about this election surprises me anymore.

As for the dead voting, at least they're quiet. LOL

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2002


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