Challenger cites voting problems, urges LePore to fix

By George Bennett, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004

WEST PALM BEACH One of Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore's challengers says Gov. Jeb Bush should remove LePore from office unless she presents a plan to fix "numerous problems and voting irregularities" in the March 9 elections.
 
Candidate Arthur Anderson made the demand during a Monday news conference. He cited published accounts of voter complaints and also brought up a discredited rumor that the elections office gave absentee voters blue pens that couldn't be read by optical-scanning machines.

About 92,000 voters went to the polls and more than 6,500 cast absentee ballots for the Democratic presidential primary and municipal elections.

Several Democrats complained that poll workers gave them electronically coded cards that did not call up the presidential ballot on the county's touch-screen voting machines.

Anderson also mentioned complaints about inadequate signs at two polling places, nonresidents being allowed to vote in Belle Glade and a lack of interpreters to help Spanish-speaking voters.

Anderson also faulted LePore for 161 absentee ballots that were rejected because they lacked proper voter signatures or signatures and addresses of witnesses. It was during the discussion of rejected absentee ballots that Anderson brought up the blue-pen story, which circulated before the March 9 election in rumors and e-mails. Anderson said he heard reports that people who went to the elections office to vote early by absentee ballot were given pens with blue ink that could not be read by optical scanning machines.

The elections office did offer ballpoint pens that are mostly white with blue trim. But the ink in the pens is black. And even if voters used blue ink, LePore said Thursday, optical-scanning machines could read the ballots.

Instructions atop the absentee ballots tell voters to "Mark with a #2 pencil or pen (DO NOT USE RED INK)."

When pressed on the blue-pen story, Anderson said someone who called the elections office on his behalf was told by an unnamed elections employee that the machines would not read blue ink. If the employee was wrong, Anderson said, "that indicates (LePore) has not appropriately trained her personnel.... That information is being dispensed from her office."

LePore said some of Anderson's complaints are unfounded and others are being addressed, but that overall problems were minor. She said she had no plans to present a written plan of action as Anderson requested.