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Provisional ballots could pose Election Day problems COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Provisional ballots could be the hanging chads of the 2004 presidential election, say critics of Ohio's guidelines for handling those votes. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell recently issued a directive to county election officials saying they are allowed to count provisional ballots only from voters who go to the correct polling location for their home address. Blackwell has ordered that if residents go to the wrong precinct, poll workers must find their correct precinct and tell them where to go, Blackwell's spokesman Carlo LoParo said. They also may cast provisional...

Florida's relatively new touch-screen voting machines, touted as a solution to the state's 2000 presidential election meltdown, didn't perform as well as machines that use an older technology during a statewide election earlier this year, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis. Records from the March 9 Democratic presidential primary show that votes were not recorded for one out of 100 voters using the new ATM-style machines. That's at least eight times more than the number of flawed votes cast in the same election with pencil marks on paper ballots tallied by an optical scanner. Experts blame Florida's political leaders...

VISITORS to Bill Rouverol’s apartment may not immediately see, as he does, that the future of American democracy depends on the gadget sitting by the window. The 86-year-old mechanical engineer has spent much of the past three years designing and building a green plastic box called the VoteSure. "The whole country is waiting for this machine," Mr Rouverol said. "I think it will save democracy." It may save Mr Rouverol’s pride, too, because his Votomatic machine, along with its imitators, was blamed for bringing American democracy into disrepute in the infamous "hanging chads" controversy of 2000. For a generation, the...

In 1996, the Democratic Party dispatched a posse of activists dressed up like 7-foot-tall cigarettes to dog Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole on the campaign trail, mercilessly harassing him for cozying up to the tobacco lobby. The ubiquitous Butt Men were magnets for the TV cameras and annoyed Dole to no end. The Viagra Man went on to lose the race, and Bill Clinton was re-elected. I'm not suggesting that the Butt Men single-handedly defeated Dole, but they were an effective and prickly reminder of Dole's deficits. Democrats aspiring to recoup the White House in 2004 have to tackle two...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - There weren't many choices to make in Broward County elections last week, but 169 ballots without votes in the Democratic presidential primary are causing some worries. Nearly half of the ballots without primary votes were in precincts with large elderly populations. Democratic Party leaders are concerned it's a sign of trouble for November. At the rate seen in Tuesday's primary, about 4,000 ballots would go without votes in the general election in a Democratic stronghold beset by election problems since the 2000 presidential election. "That's a frightening statistic," Mitch Ceasar, chairman of the county's Democratic...

Broward election staff rechecks mailings on absentee ballots By Buddy Nevins Political Writer Posted February 25 2004 Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes has ordered her employees to double-check each absentee ballot before it is sent out after a handful of voters reported this week they got the wrong ballot for the March 9 election. Seven voters in Davie, Cooper City and Hallandale Beach told the elections office they got ballots for the wrong city, out of 5,939 mailed. Those errors prompted new safeguards on the mailing of ballots, said deputy elections supervisor Gisela Salas.

It is Election Night 2004. The presidential tally stalls in a near-tie. All eyes turn to a pivotal state, a rich source of electoral votes, where election supervisors scrutinize ballots. Punch-card ballots. Yes, punch-card ballots, the much maligned voting system -- dimpled chad, hanging chad, pregnant chad -- that symbolized Florida's botched election four years ago, politically paralyzed the nation for 37 days and altered the course of electoral history. Punch cards may be gone in Florida, but chads still thrive elsewhere and are actually gaining favor in some quarters. As many as 32 million voters in 307 counties in...

Professor Joseph Olson of HamlineUniversitySchool of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election: Population of counties won by: Gore=127 million Bush=143 million Square miles of land won by: Gore=580,000 Bush=22,427,000 States won by: Gore=19 Bush=29 Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore=13.2 Bush=2.1 Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..." Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere...

"Explicit statistical evidence of massive ballot tampering in Palm Beach, Fl" "Explicit statistical evidence of massive ballot tampering in Palm Beach, Fl" Errors only Occurred in Presidential Races? Editor's Note: The following statistical analysis was sent to me by Robert Cook, PE, a nuclear engineer, with an MS in statistical quality control, a software testing specialist and QA manager, who has a track record for analyzing and correcting trends, errors, and mistakes in heavy construction projects (ships, power plants, nuclear reactors, military and aerospace vehicles, etc. for more than twenty years. Robert Cook presents here a remarkable statistical analysis of...

To: California From: Florida Re: Punch card voting machines. Here in Florida, where ''punch card'' means ''worldwide humiliation'' and chad is a bad word, elections experts have been watching California's recall election with great, um, interest. There's a lot to watch. On Monday, after a week of legal limbo, a panel of 11 federal judges heard arguments to decide whether the election should be held Oct. 7 or be postponed as much as five months. If the election goes ahead in October, voters in six counties, including Los Angeles, will use the infamous punch card voting machines to choose the...

Fla. Man Charged After Dialing 911 More Than 900 Times POSTED: 7:20 a.m. EDT July 2, 2003 UPDATED: 7:32 a.m. EDT July 2, 2003 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A 22-year-old man was charged with misusing the 911 system after dialing the emergency number more than 900 times since May, taxing dispatchers and police. Howard V. Hill Jr. was arrested Monday and released from the Palm Beach County Jail on his own recognizance. Unlawful use of the 911 system is a first-degree misdemeanor. During many of the calls, Hill claimed an officer had been shot, indicated he wanted to...

<p>Watching Al Gore make his re-entry into the public arena after nearly two years out of the spotlight, I can say with confidence there is a substantial group of people who want him to run for president again in 2004. They're called Republicans.</p>

Two U.S. congressmen sought federal intervention on Thursday to prevent another election meltdown in Broward County after state officials rejected the last possible option to ease the crush of voters at the polls next week. Reps. Peter Deutsch, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, asked U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to pressure the state to allow paper ballots to ease long lines at the precincts on Tuesday. They are threatening to go to court and allege that Florida is violating the federal Voting Rights Act.

Hubert G. Locke's argument ("Even friends abroad decry America's arrogance," Sept. 27) that America is divided into two very different political cultures is easily illustrated by looking at the state-by-state results of the 2000 presidential election. Several months ago, I analyzed these numbers from the 13 states associated with the historical Confederacy (Kentucky and Missouri -- which, granted, did not secede but did send representatives to the Confederate Congress -- along with Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas) and contrasted them with the rest of the country. The results are striking. In...

Democrats in Florida, faced with the possibility of another embarrassing fiasco in the November election have just revealed their new ballot for Dem voters.

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 26 — Democrat Al Gore, criticizing President Bush as he tests the waters for another possible presidential bid, accused the administration Thursday of an "attack on civil liberties" and ignoring signs that Osama bin Laden had been planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It was the former vice president's second scathing attack on Bush in a week.Speaking at a Democratic fund-raising breakfast in Wilmington, Del., Gore took issue with the administration's handling of intelligence information prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and for its treatment of some terrorism...

Transcript: Iraq and the War On Terrorism 09/23/2002 - 2:12 PM PST - SAN FRANCISCO By Al Gore INTRODUCTION Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --  Al Gore harshly criticized President Bush's push for war against Iraq, saying Monday that it weakens America's effort to combat terrorism and forever could damage the nation's standing in the world.</p> <p>"After Sept. 11, we had enormous sympathy, goodwill and support around the world," Gore said. "We've squandered that, and in one year we've replaced that with fear, anxiety and uncertainty, not at what the terrorists are going to do but at what we are going to do."</p>

[Exerpt]Reno's camp may sue over touch screens used in Florida primary MIAMI - (KRT) - Janet Reno's campaign for governor is trying to build a sweeping case against the now-infamous touch-screen voting machines that campaign officials believe may be responsible for Reno losing the Democratic nomination. The case, summarized in a draft document obtained by The Herald, would not be used to challenge the results of last week's election, even if Bill McBride is certified Tuesday as the nominee, campaign officials said Saturday. Instead, the evidence would become part of a larger effort to put the blame for Florida's latest...

Disputes may kill election reform bill WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators said Friday that efforts to pass a bill that would clean up the nation's voting procedures are falling apart as partisan disagreements grow larger with the approach of the fall elections. Large bipartisan majorities of the House and the Senate voted for different versions of the legislation, intended to prevent ballot disputes like those that bedeviled the 2000 presidential election. Among other things, the bills would help states buy new voting machines. The REST of the story...