Palm Beach County: where elections, like New Yorkers, go to die

Hard though it may be to believe, after eight years, we still can't get an election right in Palm Beach County. I've told you before about some of the recent problems, ranging from thousands of lost ballots to inadequate training of election personnel and more miscounted votes. And who can forget the "butterfly ballot" fiasco in 2000?

Well, as Ron Popeil might say, "But wait -- there's more!"

We've had a disputed and highly confrontational campaign and primary election here for circuit court. Normally, not national news, I know. But the ups and downs of this particular election have national implications, because the myriad problems encountered thus far do not give one confidence that November's national election will run smoothly.

County Commissioner Mary McCarty, who sits on the county elections canvassing board, said the situation is unfortunate but understandable.

"When you're dealing with this amount of paper and what they have to do to keep track of it all, I'm not surprised," she said. "It sounds like a simple matter, but as I've learned, it's much more complicated than people would imagine."

All agreed on one thing: Things don't look good for the upcoming presidential election.

With polls showing Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain in a dead heat, it is likely a recount will be triggered somewhere in the state. That could once again thrust Florida - and possibly the county - into the national limelight, as it was during the 2000 election debacle.

Instead of slightly more than 100,000 voters [in the August primary], on Nov. 4 elections officials expect 600,000 to flock to the polls. Further, the ballot will be two pages instead of one.

"More than 1 million pieces of paper?" said J. Reeve Bright, who is representing [circuit court challenger William] Abramson and also was involved in the litigation that swirled around the 2000 election. "We could not do a recount in the allotted time. I'm absolutely convinced of that."

This weekend's machine recount, for instance, was expected to be completed Saturday morning. However, what was expected to be a 90-minute final push dragged into six hours because of minor machine malfunctions and the necessity of running ballots back through machines to make sure counts were right.

The manual recount moved quickly. That's because the vast majority of ballots not read by the tabulators are either undervotes, people skipping the race, or overvotes, people voting for both candidates. Out of 9,000 reviewed by 10 teams of two people, fewer than two dozen went to the canvassing board. And of those, only seven produced votes.

McCarty, who has described the ballot counting fiasco as "embarrassing, humiliating and frustrating," said it also has been educational. But looking forward to the presidential election, she said she sees trouble.

"We're ready for November, but if there's a recount there's not a county in the state that will make the statutory deadline if they're doing it right."

It's true that the long-sought (by Democrats, anyway) "paper trail" will assist in the accuracy of future elections. However, the issue now really is two-fold: first, how can we guarantee the safety and "chain of custody" of the written ballots, and second, if there's not enough time to conduct a full and fair recount, do we face déjà vu all over again -- that is, a repeat of 2000?

This is no laughing matter -- Palm Beach County threatens to be another electoral battleground in November. And we're not ready. I'm sure the Republicans already have their Legal Assault Teams in place. Can the Democrats counter? And, more importantly, will they?